Not until he’d stepped away, not until he’d joined with the others and they had roared their rage to the sky.
The instant the men were gone—the instant Iseult knew their Threads were far enough away not to see her—she clawed herself upright.
The salamander cloak was untouched, but her breeches were scorched below the knee. A bright, shrieking patch of blister already peeked through. But she was alive.
Moon Mother bless her, she was alive.
For several guttering breaths, Iseult hesitated. Half standing, half crouched, and with a blackened corpse still smoking nearby.
She had to run. Now. Before a full battle erupted. Which way, though—that was the question, and though Iseult knew what she wanted to choose, what she needed to choose, her wants and her needs no longer aligned.
Iseult fumbled for her Threadstone. It had left a mark below her collarbone, as had the silver taler strung beside it. Iseult squeezed them both, fingers white knuckled. Her Threadwitch logic told her to travel one way. To speed, to race, to outrun what was coming. Her heart begged to go that way too—the Threads that bind tugged her south.
It was only half her heart, though. The other half … it longed to go north. The foolish way. The one where survival seemed impossible.
More cannons thundered in the distance. Smoke plumed across the sky. The battle had begun, and it would soon reach where Aeduan and Owl ought to be. If Iseult would just turn south, she could leave it all behind.
It was then, as she stood there in agonized indecision, that magic roared over her. A hurricane of power and fiery Threads. It laced over the sky, heat to set the forest aflame.
In that moment, Iseult knew what she had to do. Logic didn’t matter, nor Threadwitch practicality, nor even the opposing halves of her heart.
What mattered was doing the right thing.
So Iseult made her choice, and she ran.
* * *
Aeduan carried Owl on his back. She bounced and jostled, her fear a palpable thing.
But like her namesake, Owl was a fighter. She held tight and didn’t once resist the onward sprint. Aeduan’s blood, alive with magic, drove him to speeds no man could match. No man could stop.
Or so he hoped. Aeduan had never had to dash like this while protecting another person.
A horn split the air with a single, long bellow. A-ooooo!
Then fire erupted in the distance, an inferno ignited by magic.
Firewitch. Aeduan didn’t know if it was the one from yesterday—and it didn’t matter. A vast conflagration of heat and flame rolled this way. He had to outrun it.
Then the horses were there, breaking through the forest with Baedyeds on their backs. Color flashed on their saddles—streaming and bright against the gray haze that now drifted between the trees.
Aeduan swung Owl around and yanked her to the ground. An arrow punched into his back, he stumbled forward, crouching over Owl.
No arrows hit her, though, and that, Aeduan thought, was at least one good thing.
He pulled Owl closer to him, protecting her while he cataloged pain and damage. Broken rib. Pierced left lung. Pierced heart.
The impaled heart would be a problem—that would slow him. For without blood to pump easily through his veins, Aeduan couldn’t tap into his full power. He would be slow, he would be weak.
And now a second arrow hit. Directly into his neck. Blood spurted.
Always. There was always blood where Aeduan went.
The fire was closing in now. Smoke sawed into his throat, into his tear ducts. His eyes streamed, and the oaks, the riders, the soldiers now charging from beyond—they all seemed to snake and blur.
Run, my child, run.
The river. If Aeduan could just get Owl to the Amonra, then they might escape this growing firestorm.
He rose, snapping the arrow’s shaft from his neck as he did so. Voices and blood-scents crashed around him. Deer and squirrels and moles fled.
Without a word, Aeduan hefted Owl onto his shoulder and resumed his run. A stag ran too, and Aeduan forced himself to keep pace with it. To follow its route through the trees.
Not once did Aeduan check on Owl. He’d have to crane his neck to look at her, and there simply was no time. Not when every step had to be perfectly placed to keep them out of the fire. Not when every inch of his attention had to be given to holding her tight.
At last, he, Owl, and the stag outran the roar of distant flames. In its place, steel clashed. Blood-scents crawled up Aeduan’s nose. War had come to the Contested Lands once more.
Aeduan didn’t slow. If anything, he pumped his legs faster. Owl shook against him, but his grip—and hers—held fast.
Ahead, the trees ended. The river opened up, but it was covered in ships aflame and cannons firing.
The stag reached the end of the forest.
Arrows slammed into him. The creature reared, and blood bloomed.
Aeduan barely had enough time to stop himself. To wrench around before more arrows loosed, whizzing past. Two crunched into his left arm—but he twisted, releasing Owl to the ground.
Nothing hit her. She was safe, she was safe.
Aeduan was not, though. Too many wounds; too much blood rushing out of him; too much smoke in his lungs. Worse, he was at the river, and he saw no way through.
Run, my child, run.
Aeduan yanked Owl back into the trees. Too hard, though—he pulled her too hard. She stumbled, she fell.
Her eyes, panicked and streaming, lifted to meet Aeduan’s. So much terror there, so much confusion and trust.
The earth trembled, moving almost in time to Owl’s panting breaths. So sudden, so strange—the tremor turned Aeduan’s legs to dust. He fell, tumbling out of the trees and onto the shore.
Arrows pummeled him, one after the other.
He turned toward Owl, hoping to tell her to run! To hide! Just as his mother had told him so many years ago. But he was too slow. A Baedyed rider was snatching her up. Then the rider reeled his horse about and galloped back into the smoky trees.
Aeduan dragged himself after. The earth still shook, a thousand aftershocks that rattled each arrow deeper into his flesh. He couldn’t remove them or his body would begin healing with full force—and if he healed, he would pass out.
His breath hiccupped. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His vision quivered, black swarming at the edges.
He sniffed, almost frantic, for Owl’s blood. Or for the man who’d nabbed her, but Aeduan was simply too weak, and there was no magic to be spared.
He listed and swayed through the trees. Creatures still ran and birds streaked, all while flames licked in closer. Yet Aeduan scarcely felt the coming heat. Owl had been carried this way, so this way he would go.
Until a figure appeared before him.
At first, Aeduan thought it an apparition. That exhaustion and smoke inhalation played tricks on his eyes, creating dark shadows to stride through the burning trees.
Then the figure walked from the fire. His hands flung up like a maestro’s, and wherever his wrist twirled, new fires erupted. Trees, hedges, and even birds—they all ignited in a burst of fiery death.
Aeduan knew he should circle away, but there was nowhere to go. The forest burned; he was trapped.
The Firewitch turned to ignite a birch, and his eyes—glowing like embers—caught on Aeduan.
The man smiled, a flash of white in a world of flames, and Aeduan recognized him. It was the one from before. The Firewitch who’d tried to kill him.
As that awareness cinched into place, a fresh surge of energy roared through Aeduan’s muscles. Smoke laced and fire singed, it was enough power to send him racing forward. If he could kill this man, maybe the fire would end. In three magic-sped steps, Aeduan reached the Firewitch. He rasped his sword free.
The Firewitch opened his mouth, and fire spewed out.
Aeduan barely managed to lurch left before the onslaught funneled past. So loud, it ate all other sounds. So hot, it boiled aw
ay all senses.
Aeduan swung. His blade hit only fire—and pyres were now igniting beneath his feet. Sparks and smoke to blind. Run, my child, run.
He heaved left again. More fire. He tumbled right. Endless flames. He spun around to move backward, but now he found only stone. The pillars in the gorge. No escape.
Aeduan turned to face the Firewitch, still wearing that cursed smile. Gloating and gleeful.
So this is how I will die. Aeduan had never thought it would be flames. A beheading, perhaps. Old age, more likely. But not fire—not since he’d escaped that death all those years ago.
The world shivered and smeared before him. Still, his training took over. With his free hand, he checked that his baldric was still in place. The knives ready for the grabbing.
Then he readied his stance, for though blood might burn, Aeduan’s soul would not.
The Firewitch lifted his hands for a final blaze. Even with the smoke, Aeduan smelled the attack gathering on the man’s blood. Aeduan’s muscles tensed, waiting for the perfect moment to charge. He’d have to go directly into the flames if he wanted to reach the man’s neck.
The attack never came, though. As Aeduan stood there, bracing and ready, shadows crept over the fire. At first, he’d thought clouds—a rainstorm—except the longer he stared, the more he realized the shadows came from the Firewitch.
Lines ran over the man’s body, rivulets of darkness. He started convulsing, screaming. He clutched at his blackening, bubbling arms. He scratched, he clawed.
Cleaving, Aeduan realized, and as that thought flickered through his mind, the Firewitch stilled. His eyes turned pure black. His fires snuffed out one by one around him.
A figure in white coalesced behind the Firewitch. She walked stiffly, her hands extended and her eyes rolled back in her head. The salamander cloak’s fire-flap covered half her face. Ash coated her brow.
Aeduan didn’t know how the Threadwitch was here. He didn’t know why either. He only knew he couldn’t look away.
The Threadwitch walked, each step evenly spaced, to the Firewitch. He was a monster fully cleaved now, yet when he wriggled and snarled at Iseult, she showed no fear. No reaction at all.
Instead, she lowered the fire-flap on the salamander cloak, then with her mouth stretched wide … she snapped her teeth at the air.
The Firewitch collapsed. Dead.
THIRTY-SIX
Vivia launched herself to the water’s surface halfway down the water-bridge. Here, the seafire had stopped. Here, no ships sailed, and she rode atop a tide of her own making.
Even through the wildness of her waters, Vivia recognized her Fox warship ahead.
Heat erupted in her chest at the thought of Baedyed pirates onboard. A blistering thing that pressed against her veins, her skin, her lungs.
The Nihar rage.
Finally, it came to her. Finally, she could tap into the wild anger of her father’s line, she could embrace the berserking strength that consumed all fear.
Vivia shot up from the water, enough violence scorching through her to carry her high. Sailors saw Vivia. They pointed, their mouths bursting wide as other sailors scrambled to defend.
But they were too slow and Vivia too enraged. She rocketed onto the ship’s main deck. Midair, she punched her fists, punched her waves. Men crashed back. Into each other, into the river, and one man, directly onto a saber he’d tried—too late—to unsheathe.
Then Vivia hit the deck, wood splintering under her knees as she crunched down. A sling of her left hand, and a tide whipped up to yank more men overboard. A slice of her right, and shards of water cut through flesh. Tore open necks.
Blood, hot and glorious, splattered across Vivia’s skin.
She barely noticed, her attention already locking on the hose at the stern. She’d never seen seafire before this day, but she could recognize its source. A massive leather tube, the width of an oak, pumped resin from belowdecks. Its spout was a modified cannon that could be spun around and aimed.
A sword swung at Vivia’s head. She ducked. Too slow. Steel clipped her left shoulder, taking skin and cloth and blood. Heat—distant and meaningless—gathered up her arm. But Vivia was at the hose, and there was nothing these sailors could do. With her left arm, spurting, she yanked it around and aimed for the main deck. Then she hauled at the spout’s crank—
“Stop! Stop!” A figure hobbled toward her, hands flailing and robes flipping.
Serrit Linday.
Vivia stopped, shock staying her hand. Here was her culprit tucked somewhere in Nubrevna, here was where the jumbled mess from her spies would ultimately lead. Linday was the one working with the Baedyeds, the one working with the Nines—and he had tried to kill Merik.
Vivia didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but she couldn’t deny what stood before her. Everything really did lead back to Serrit Linday.
“Stay where you are,” Vivia ordered.
Linday halted. His robe was torn, his face smeared with black. Ash, Vivia assumed, except that the darkness seemed to move. To circle and twine.
“If you release that seafire,” Linday called, “you will ignite a thousand firepots belowdecks. I will die, and you will die too.”
Vivia couldn’t resist. She laughed. A hollow, rusty sound. “Why are you here, Serrit? Betraying us to the Purists wasn’t enough for you?”
His face constricted. The darkness pulsed against his skin. For several moments, his throat wobbled like he might gag.
Through it all, the ship still coasted onward toward the dam. The misty valley below, still so green and alive, slid by.
Then finally Linday squeaked, “I did not want to betray Nubrevna. Ragnor promised me your throne.” His voice snapped off. He doubled over. Hacking.
Black tar flowed from his mouth. The shadows on his skin swirled faster. Bubbled faintly, like a Cleaved.
Vivia stepped away from the hose and stalked three steps toward her least favorite vizer. The sailors collectively lunged as if to attack, but Linday growled through bursts of black tar, “Stand down.”
“What’s happening to you?” Vivia asked. “Are you cleaving?”
Three more coughs, then Linday’s head lolled up, eyes shining. When he spoke again, his voice was honeyed. Accented. “The dead cannot cleave, Princess. Not truly, for the dead … their Threads are already torn asunder. I simply scoop them up before they shrivel away.”
“Who does? Who are you?” The question was so soft it was almost lost to the breeze of the bridges, to the distant boom of storm and seafire behind.
But Linday—or whoever it was that controlled him—had no trouble hearing. “I’m the one you should be afraid of, Princess, for once the dam breaks and the city is dead, I will be the one who marches in and claims everything. Including that Well your family had hidden all these ages ago.”
At those words, the world seemed to stretch into a strange, sluggish thing. A hundred thoughts colliding at once. A hundred little details to stand out.
The dam loomed with its massive crack, so strangely quiet. So strangely calm. Gulls circled, and a hawk caught air currents drifting beside the bridge. The breeze caressed Vivia’s skin, and the sailors watched the sky as if waiting for something.
Or for someone.
In a cumbersome move, with the scene blending like fresh paint beneath the rain, Vivia looked behind her. At Lovats, where black plumed in contained columns. Already weaker than when Vivia had set off.
The storm was leaving too. No more rain, no more lightning. Just black, spinning clouds rising away from the walls, like poison sucked from a wound.
Lovats would survive this day, but only if Vivia could keep the dam from breaking. Only if she could keep this boat from traveling any farther. And though she didn’t know if the water-bridges’ magic would hold, she felt the consequences from a flooded valley were better than those from a flooded city.
She swiveled her head left. Staring at the patchwork farms so far below. The same view her mother ha
d seen before she’d left this life forever.
It was, Vivia decided, not a bad view to end on.
With that thought, time lurched forward. The world resumed, and Vivia vaulted for the seafire spout. She gripped the iron crank and pulled the handle into place. A shiny resin hacked from the end. Then a full stream burst forth, spraying across the planks, the mast, the sails.
Fire erupted. Black and white and spreading too fast to escape.
The remaining sailors ran. Not Linday. He simply stood there, letting it spew over him, even as his body ignited like a torch. Even as he burned and burned and burned.
Vivia turned to the bulwark and jumped. She dunked beneath the waves and swam with her magic to propel her back toward Lovats.
Too slow, though—she was too slow.
The ship exploded. A burst of energy slammed over her, catapulting her to the surface. Then came the sound, but she was already flung up. Flung out.
As her body left the water-bridge and the valley appeared below her, dappled by shadows and flame, Vivia could do nothing but smile. For though she might now be falling to her death, at least the water-bridge had held.
And at least the dam had held too.
* * *
Safi wanted to break something. She wanted to break, to shred, to pummel, and to slay.
Then perhaps the world would make sense again.
For Merik Nihar could not be dead. That truth boomed in time to her heart. In time to her loping steps forward.
Slaves charged past her on all sides, their limbs long unused. Witcheries ready to let loose. Screaming, racing, hungry. Bursts of fire to her right; lashes of wind to her left; stones rattling underfoot. A maelstrom of color and violence, of hunger and freedom so true, true, true. The slaves thundered into the tunnels, every cavern identical. There was no telling which way traffic traveled versus which way traffic fled.
Fingers clutched Safi’s elbow. She wrenched her sword high … but it was only Lev, her eyes huge and scars stretched long. “Where is the empress?”
Safi didn’t know, so she didn’t answer.
“We need to go,” Lev continued, squeezing Safi tighter. “The slaves are freeing other slaves, and this place’ll be overrun with guards at any moment.”