Chapters 13 & 14, Witchlight
In which Safi's and Iseult's finally weaves in...
Chapter Thirteen
Iseult det Midenzi knelt over the dying man. He had been fine two days ago, his wife said, but now he had these shadowy lines across his body. Please, are you the one who heals the Cleaved? Please, can you help him?
Iseult couldn’t help him.
She had tried. Since dawn, when the woman had first found her at the imperial hunting lodge, Iseult had tried to weave this man’s Threads back into life as she had done with the Hell-Bards a month ago. Living, living, breath and living. Threads that heal, Threads that thrive. But it was early afternoon now, and still his Threads had not responded.
It made no sense. Iseult should be able to control these Threads. She should be able to heal this slowly cleaving man. Yet it was as if, by destroying Corlant, the very nature of cleaving had changed. Gone was the quick, vicious death that bubbled up from the core and burned a person from the inside out, magic turned molten and cruel. Now it was this agonizing thing that crept over a person for days, sucking the life from them.
It was horrible to witness, and Iseult hated that none of her tools as a Weaverwitch could stop what Moon Mother had decided must be.
“Iseult,” Safi whispered, kneeling beside her. “You’re exhausted. You need to stop.”
“I c-can’t.” Iseult’s hands trembled as she wove them through—again—the man’s Threads. Strands like burning silk. Here were the ones that bound him to his wife and his three daughters. Here were the ones that bound him to his work as a blacksmith. And here were the Severed Threads eating him alive.
They seared against Iseult’s palms, as Severed Threads always did, except now she couldn’t control them. She was going to have to turn to this man’s wife and say, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
It was the third person in as many days Iseult hadn’t been able to heal—and the fourth person in a week who’d had no magic but had begun cleaving all the same. Why?
“Come,” Safi repeated, and this time, she gripped Iseult’s elbow, gentle but unrelenting. Iseult didn’t fight her Threadsister; there was no point, and Safi was right: she was exhausted.
“I will come back soon,” Iseult told the wife, a lie on two fronts. First, because soon wouldn’t save the man. Second, because Iseult was leaving soon. Tonight, in fact. She and Safi were leaving this eastern corner of Cartorra to brave the Windswept Plains.
Still, it gave the woman hope to offer promises. It made this woman feel like someone cared enough to do something—and Iseult did care. And she was going to do something. “Keep him warm and make him drink water.”
“Thank you,” the woman replied. The lines around her mouth and eyes were stark with exhaustion and fear. And with love too, for the Threads that bind etched deep marks upon the soul.
Yet as the woman offered Iseult jars of lanolin meant for oiling blades, as a thank-you, Iseult spotted faint shadows within the woman’s weathered hands. They followed her veins, and were it not for Iseult’s magic—her constant connection to Threads and the corruption that can work inside them—she would never have noticed. But she did notice, she did recognize, and her heart broke for the second time that day.
It was spreading. This slow, incurable cleaving was spreading.
“Th-thank you,” Iseult murmured to the woman before her weak grasp on stasis could give her away. Then she hurried with Safi out of the woman’s home.
They mounted their horses, a chestnut named Dandelion and a gray named Cloud, and set off into the afternoon. Half the morning had passed while Iseult bowed over that blacksmith. Wasted time with no one saved or healed.
Her throat ached. Her tongue felt sluggish behind her teeth.
“The w-wife is cleaving too,” she said once they had left the small village behind. Snow dusted the road, hiding potholes along the edges. Knowing Safi, she would send Hell-Bards to fix those holes later today because, even if she kept saying she was not Empress—even if she and Iseult were leaving at midnight, Safi couldn’t seem to let the responsibilities go.
It had been a month since Safi had taken full control as Empress of Cartorra. They were calling it a military coup in Praga, and already domnas and doms gathered to oppose Safi. Little good it would do them. Many of the Hell-Bard forces backed her, and although they were no longer bound to a Loom or impervious to magic, they were still the best soldiers in all the Witchlands.
Thousands of newcomers arrived each day to the lodge, Hell-Bards and soldiers summoned from the capital, servants and nobility Safi’s magic told her could be trusted, and of course, the necessary craftsmen that followed large crowds and war.
Including that blacksmith and his wife.
“Evrane will go in your stead,” Safi said over the whip of wind through barren trees. Over the clop-clop of Dandelion’s uncrushed gait. “She will comfort the man more than you can. Her magic can at least soothe his pain.”
Iseult leaned forward to pat Cloud’s neck. The gray mare’s breath fogged. Iseult’s did too. “Maybe I can still find a solution. We haven’t left yet.”
“You said that yesterday.” Safi’s tone was sharp, her Threads fluttering with impatience. “And you said it the day before too, Iz. I don’t see how twelve hours will change anything. Which is exactly why we’re leaving: because you know what we have to do to help people.”
Yes, Iseult did know. She and Safi must heal the final Well. They had to heal all magic in the Witchlands, and only then could this cleaving end.
And only then could she and Safi finally step away from the noise, the Threads, the expectations. They were both so tired all the time.
Safi was especially exhausted, what with the added pressure of running an empire—not to mention the Cahr Awen souls stuck inside her. They gave her headaches, bulging her Threads to clotted thickness. Safi never complained, nor even mentioned the pain. But Iseult could see it so vividly.
And Iseult knew there was only one cure for it.
Ahead, the road split: one way toward the imperial hunting lodge, the other south to circle around the Solfatarra. A wagon trundled toward them; a square of Hell-Bards trotted north toward the lodge.
The girls sank into their hoods, fur-lined and drab brown. We are nothing more than standard travelers on the road. Look the other way, please. Certainly, their cloaks were finely made, their boots a supple black, and their horses too well tended to be steeds for the road-weary. But as Mathew always taught: people saw what they wanted to see. As long as Iseult and Safi hunched with exhaustion, as long as they kept their horses moving at a shamble, they were invisible.
The wagon’s driver nodded at them. The Hell-Bards never noticed they were there. And at the fork, they ambled Cloud and Dandelion south, away from the lodge and all its demands. At this distance, it was nothing more than a lump of white blending into the snow and sky.
A quarter mile down the new road, a trail veered into thickets and trees. Safi reined Dandelion that way; Iseult followed with Cloud. Few people traveled south, and fewer still aimed toward the Solfatarra. Within minutes, a new lump appeared—this one a daunting, shadowy place that both locals and newcomers avoided.
Cursed, they called it, and they weren’t far wrong. This ancient, half-collapsed tower was where Iseult had broken her Threadstone and Safi’s too. That act had freed all the souls and power that now thundered inside Safi’s brain.
It was also where Corlant had died, at the altar in the center. His body was gone, his blood had long since soaked into the earth. There was nothing to show he had ever been here, had ever lived at all—nor anything to show how often Iseult and Safi had visited. For the snow always fell anew. It always erased their passage.
Iseult’s cheeks were cold, her toes numb as she and Safi dismounted beside the tumbled stones at the tower’s edge. Each girl removed sacks from her horse’s saddle before striding into the tower. Past the altar they strode, and into a shadowy corner beside the curved remains of a staircase. Here, a massive mound of snow awaited. The girls each grabbed a corner of a waxed tarp.
Yank. Snap. Snow flew, spraying into Iseult’s face. Flaying her cheeks like blades as she and Safi flung the tarp aside and revealed crates to the winter morning. Ten of them, each carefully organized.
“Don’t you dare put that there,” Iseult snapped as Safi moved toward a box on the left. “That’s our camping supplies, and your pack is filled with food.”
“Right, right.” Safi scowled. Her Threads flashed with russet annoyance. “Food goes . . . here?” She kicked at a bottom box.
Iseult gave her a flat-eyed stare.
“Here?” Safi kicked at another.
More staring from Iseult.
“Here? Here?” She kept kicking, red suffusing across the entirety of her Threads with each failed kick. “What about here? Here?”
“Oh, don’t kick that one, Safi! That’s got firepots inside!”
Safi flinched back. But then promptly resumed her kicking, if more gingerly now. “Here? Here? Hell-pits, Iz, what about here?” She had reached the literal last crate.
“That,” Iseult answered with a stately nod, “is the one for food. Well done, Safi. You clearly have a knack for this.”
“Oh, shove it.” Safi stomped to the box. “It’s all going to get mixed up on pack horses anyway—”
“It absolutely will not.”
“—so who cares where I put this dried meat and wheel of cheese? Maybe it’ll taste better if it’s with the firepots.”
“We’ve come here at least eight times in the last week, Saf.” Iseult shuffled to the first crate Safi had kicked. “How do you still not know where things go?”
“I’m a doer. Not a planner.”
“Painfully accurate.” Iseult wedged off the lid and dropped her own supplies inside: a Firewitched candle that could burn even in high winds, a blanket of salamander fibers, and finally, the newly acquired lanolin jars.
Once it was all inside, she returned the lid, then joined Safi several paces away. It was clear from the way Safi eyed the crates that she still didn’t know what was inside them. “What else are we missing?”
“Not much,” Iseult said. “Just the Aetherwitched troop map, which you need to get. And then a tent . . . wh-which I’ll get tonight when I go to the tribe.” She now leveled her whole attention onto Safi—who pointedly avoided that gaze. “In other words, Safi: you n-need to talk to Caden. Now.”
A fresh flare of annoyance on Safi’s Threads, but this time it was tinged with mustard shame and a rusted gray dread. Because Safi knew what she had to do, and understandably, she didn’t want to do it.
Iseult could hardly blame her for that. If she had to do to Aeduan what Safi was about to do to Caden . . .
Well, there was a reason Iseult had timed their departure for when Aeduan was away.
Safi swiped a hand across her hair, brushing snowflakes off the row of short braids she’d made along the top. “Yeah, yeah. Talk to Caden. I’ll do it, Iz.”
“Now.”
“Eventually.”
“Now.”
“I’ll start with the map first.”
“Safi, if you k-keep putting this off—”
“Yeah, yeah, Iz. I know. But I promise I’ll get it done before you go to the tribe tonight. Does that satisfy you?”
Iseult grunted. It didn’t satisfy her at all, but she knew when she’d nagged enough.
Safi heaved a sigh. It was a sound so weary, it briefly veiled all her Threads in bruise-like despair. Her spine slumped. “Why does it have to be us, Iz?”
“What do you mean?” Iseult bounced on her feet; her toes were getting numb standing here.
“Why do we have to be the Cahr Awen? Isn’t it bad enough that I’ve got to be an empress? Now I also have to heal a thrice-damned Well surrounded by raiders?” Safi opened her arms to the crates. “I mean, surely the goddess could have found better candidates than us.”
Iseult snorted, but it was a humorless sound. She didn’t like the worry twining through Safi’s Threads—and she liked even less the way the Cahr Awen souls swelled those Threads to twice their usual size.
“If you’re getting cold feet, Safi, it’s kind of l-late for that.”
“I don’t have cold feet. Well, I do literally.” Safi lifted a booted toe. “But not about our plans. We’ll leave tonight. I promise. I’m merely wondering philosophically why it has to be us? You know, it’s like asking why the sky is blue. I realize there are no easy answers.”
“The sky is blue because sunlight gets scattered by things in the atmosphere. Goddess, Safi, didn’t you listen to any of our lessons from Mathew?”
A pause. Then a huff. “Of course I listened. I meant blue as in sad. Why is the sky so sad?”
“Because you keep disappointing it w-with your lies.”
Safi laughed, her Threads brightening with pink, warm in a way the tower around them never could be. “Gods below, Iseult det Midenzi, it’ll be nice when it’s just the two of us again.”
“And by the Moon Mother, Safiya fon Hasstrel.” Iseult smiled back. “I agree.”
The girls and their horses retraced their route. Back to the main road, back to the fork, back toward the crowded lodge, where hundreds of Threads coalesced like a quilt upon the horizon.
When the bridge over the dark-watered moat to the lodge came into view, one set of crimson, furious Threads stood out: Caden fitz Grieg.
Ever since three searches of the Solfatarra had failed to turn up his Thread-family, Zander and Lev, the Hell-Bard had become a walking firepot. And he’d taken to expressing his frustration at anyone who so much as looked at him wrong . . . which was, more often than not, Safi.
It didn’t help either that Caden’s Firewitchery, which had been culled from him by the Hell-Bard Loom, was now returned. He and countless other Hell-Bards were suddenly brimming with powers they hadn’t felt or used in years.
He spotted Safi across the drawbridge and kicked into a canter her way. His Threads pulsed like storm clouds. “How many times are you going to do this?” he demanded once she was in earshot. “I realize you’ve no concern for your life, Your Imperial Majesty, but have some concern for mine.”
“I didn’t ask to be an empress,” Safi retorted.
“And I didn’t ask to be your guard, but here we are.”
And this, Iseult thought, is why you should have spoken to Caden sooner. She had heard this argument so many times in the past month, she could now recite it by heart. Next, Caden would say, If you leave the lodge—
“If you leave the lodge,” Caden barked, twisting his horse into step beside Safi, “you need a square of Hell-Bards around you. That is the rule.”
“And the rule is stupid. I can handle myself. Besides, I have Iseult with me.” What Safi didn’t add was what they all knew: And she can easily kill almost anyone.
“Ah yes,” Caden said, taking on a calm, thoughtful tone. “The other half of the precious, irreplaceable Cahr Awen.”
Iseult sighed. She had better things to do than waste her time and energy watching Safi and Caden rehash the same argument. Especially since Safi’s own temper was fueled by grief. She knew what she had to do—and she absolutely didn’t want to do it.
Iseult spurred Cloud into a canter. The horse’s hooves clattered into a three-beat rhythm on the road, and neither Safi nor Caden noticed her departure. The Threads that bound them had turned fiery with mutual irritation, mutual unspoken pain. There was little space in their Threads for anything else.
Iseult did not look back.
Chapter Fourteen
Safiya fon Hasstrel knew that her pacing bothered her uncle. But if she didn’t pace, then all this energy wriggling in her body was going to come out through her fists. Back, forth, back, forth across the long room that had once held feasts and feasters, but now held all the missives, tomes, and ledgers necessary to run an empire. The dining table that stretched almost thirty paces was now invisible beneath maps of the empire—and, more importantly, maps of Poznin.
Those were the maps that interested her. Every day, more figurines were added to them, just as every day more were added to the area representing the Solfatarra. And wherever those figurines were placed, corresponding images would appear on smaller Aetherwitched maps that were given to the spies or soldiers who needed them.
Understandably, these maps were closely guarded, because they revealed not only Ragnor’s troops but Eron’s as well.
“Safi, are you listening to me?” Eron demanded when she reached the midpoint of her usual path alongside the windows overlooking a courtyard.
“No,” she admitted, even as her magic whispered, False. She always listened—sometimes she even cared. But when she’d told her uncle she had no plans to be Empress, she had meant it. It was bad enough being the Cahr Awen; she couldn’t do both.
She frowned up at a portrait above the central window. It showed Henrick’s mother, a woman with a comparable underbite to her son’s. “Do you think,” she mused, “the artist tried to emphasize her jaw that way or was he just bad at shading?” She glanced at her uncle. “You knew the woman, yes?”
“Gods dammit, Safi.” Eron hauled to his feet, and Safi felt a twinge of shame at the stiffness in his rise. At the grunt of exertion he tried to hide, but couldn’t swallow back.
Turn around, she willed at him. Turn around.
He didn’t turn around.
Scowling, Safi planted her hands on the table opposite him and forced herself to recite, word for word, everything he’d said: “The Carawen monks and their new Abbot Lizl will leave their Monastery in one week—although only if the snows continue to hold off. You would almost prefer the snows arrive, however, and slow them, because at this point, we do not have a reliable supply chain from Ontigua. Thus, when the monks do arrive, we will be forced to ration.”
For several moments, the only sound was the crackle of the fire in the two hearths at either end of the room. Then Eron matched Safi’s scowl—the same slouch to his brow, the same sideways curl of his lips, and the same thoughtful gleam in his Hasstrel blue eyes. Clearly she had learned this expression from him, and that only made her own scowl sink deeper.
“The problem with our Ontiguan supply chain is the Hell-Bards,” Eron continued, pointing shakily toward the map next to the stack Safi needed to pull from. “With half of them leaving the service, our forces are—”
“Weakened to the point of useless. Yes, Uncle.” Safi straightened. “I know that’s why you sent the Bloodwitch on his special errand.”
“And if Habim and Mathew do not succeed on their offensive here . . .” Eron stretched toward another map, using a quill to gesture at the Sirmayans. “Then we will be on tight rations the entire winter. Which is why you must return to Praga. You and Iseult, before the Carawens can reach us.” Eron wiped at his brow. His skin was too pale. He needed to sit again, and his scowl was now shifting toward one of personal frustration. He was glad to be alive, but he was not yet accustomed to the body the acid-thick dungeon had left behind.
True.
Unfortunately, Safi couldn’t let him sit again.
“The best way to recruit new soldiers is to show them for whom they fight.”
“Yes, and for what they fight.” Safi scrubbed a hand at her eyes as she walked the length of the table again, her tan breeches rubbing against the wood. The map of Marstok showed ample soldiers in Habim’s forces, but all were blocked by mountains thick with blizzards. The one pass the Marstoks could cross was still held by the Raider King. His people would die. The Marstoks would die. Cartorrans would die, and even the Carawen monks. And for what?
War, war, war. All in the name of peace. All in the name of the Cahr Awen.
But then, that is why we’re leaving.
“Your plan was such a foolish one,” Safi said, her voice fuzzy as she tried to count just how many people would die—or how many she might be able to save. “So many years,” she went on, “and so many people. How did Mathew describe it? There are big wheels in motion. Wheels your uncle and many others have spent years rolling into position.” She shook her head. “What a waste of your time and energy.”
“Stopping a war is a waste?” Eron’s voice wasn’t, for once, angry. Nor even insulted. If anything, he sounded surprised—and mildly amused.
“The way you did it, yes.” Safi turned to face him.
“Except that war in the Witchlands has ceased, hasn’t it? Marstok no longer fights; Cartorra no longer fights; and Dalmotti has withdrawn after a rout at Nubrevna. So I should think my ‘foolish plan’ has actually succeeded.”
“The Raider King still remains, though. Blood will be shed to stop him. A war’s worth.”
“Yes,” Eron agreed. “But once he is gone—once you and your Threadsister have healed the final Well, peace will reign.”
“And you think I am the naive one?”
There—that finally did it. Eron set his jaw and turned to face the window. He stared over the soldiers, over Hell-Bards, over the servants and tradesmen rallied to an imperial banner.
In seconds, Safi was back at the map of Poznin and Arithuania. Of course the stack she needed was stuck beneath the primary map littered with the Aetherwitched figurines. She gripped the edge, hoping to slide it sideways—
“There has been some good news from our spies in the north.”
Safi’s snapped her gaze toward her uncle. He wasn’t turning around—thank the Twelve. “Oh?” she half squeaked. “And what is that?”
“Baedyeds are leaving the Raider King’s banner, now that Habim has agreed to their demands in Marstok.”
“So they will get back their Sand Sea?” Safi tugged again at the map. Figurines wavered on the top, and she recalled a street performer she’d once seen. The woman had snapped a cloth off a table without disrupting a single dish or saucer.
Safi, meanwhile, was disrupting everything. Three of the Red Sails figurines fell. One of the Baedyeds too. “But what of the people who live in the Sand Sea now? What will happen to them? They will be displaced just as the Baedyeds were a century ago. Have Habim and Mathew made accommodations for them and their families?”
Eron shifted as if to turn.
And Safi gave up on stealth. She yanked like the street performer had, but without the grace. Six more figurines toppled. Then the map was in her grasp. She instantly dropped it to the floor.
“Crap!” she barked, right as Eron finished his aching turn. “I, uh . . . knocked over your toy soldiers.” She pasted on a face of contrition.
Eron, meanwhile, didn’t respond. He simply sighed, all antagonism sliding off his face. He was once more a tired man doing his best to run an empire. “Safi, please: Will you at least consider traveling to Praga? Discuss it with your Threadsister. I’m sure she understands how much it will help our cause.”
Safi rubbed at her forehead. Now that she had what she’d come for, a headache was coming on. One of the monstrous ones that never let her sleep. “I promise to make a decision,” she murmured. Lie, her magic frizzed. Because her decision had already been made.
“Thank you.” Eron opened his hands. They trembled. “Your consideration is all I ask for.”
Safi didn’t respond. Instead, she dug her fingers into her temples. The pain was building fast behind her left eyeball. Soon it would leap across to the right. “I need to lie down, please.”
A flash of understanding—possibly even sympathy—crossed her uncle’s face. Though Safi had never directly told him of her headaches, they all must have noticed how often she vanished into her room. And the servants certainly saw the blindfold she’d fashioned out of velvet. It had become her nightly routine to tie it as tightly as she could around her head, until the pressure on the outside of her eyeballs felt as if it matched the pressure within.
“We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow,” Eron said. “Over breakfast.”
“Yes,” Safi agreed, even as her magic skittered and clawed: There won’t be a tomorrow! There won’t be a breakfast! She swooped down, and after sliding the map into a loose sleeve, she gathered up the fallen figurines. “Sorry,” she said as she dropped them onto the map.
And once more, Erin sighed.
For a brief moment, as Safi departed and the door clicked shut behind her, she considered if perhaps she should offer her uncle a good-bye. A proper ending after so many years as antagonists. After all, this might be the last time she ever saw him again.
Love and dread, Safi thought. That was the fon Hasstrel motto, and never had it felt more perfect for this family that was not really a family at all. But Safi couldn’t make her feet turn. She couldn’t make her muscles swivel back. She simply walked away toward the main stairwell. And although her magic shrieked at her for all the lies she was telling herself—I don’t need Eron, I won’t miss him—she pretended not to notice. She pretended not to care.
On the floor above the dining room, elegant bedrooms overlooked the forest. One such room, small but finely appointed, had been repurposed to house Henrick fon Cartorra. Iron bars were now fastened over his windows; a bewitched lock had been bolted to his door, and four Hell-Bards stood watch at every hour of the day.
“I will not be long,” Safi told them as they slid aside so she could reach the door. She and Eron were the only ones who knew the lock spell’s rhythms and words. Six beats and five pauses, then the silently mouthed Goat tits in a piss storm.
Safi had chosen the password, of course, and she’d chosen it with relish knowing how much her uncle would hate it. Even now, a smile cut through the headache gripping her left eyeball.
The door’s locks clicked apart. Safi pushed into the bedroom of evergreen upholstery and wood paneling. At a lone armchair beside a fireplace—one that Henrick had to tend himself—sat the former Emperor. He wore chains around his wrists and ankles, yet on his lap was an open book.
It was the one freedom Safi allowed him: he could choose books from the lodge’s library to keep himself busy. Otherwise, he had to remain here for all the rest of his days. Or at least for all the days it took Safi to figure out what else to do with him.
Eron wanted his head on a pike. A logical desire, since Henrick had killed Eron’s sister and brother-in-law—Safi’s parents—and he had ruined Eron’s life along with countless others while cruelly controlling the Hell-Bards.
Safi knew she was supposed to feel the same hatred, the same fury. And certainly her disgust for the man ran deep. Henrick fon Cartorra was the reason she was an orphan; he was the reason she’d been forced into the noose; he was the reason she had lived most of her life on the run as a Truthwitch.
Yet even the most hated men could offer use somewhere.
Iseult had been impressed when Safi had told her this; Safi had been, quite frankly, impressed with herself too.
It helps, she thought as she stared down at Henrick’s face—at the cleverness he no longer veiled behind his dark eyes, that we aren’t married and he is powerless. The man had settled into a complacency that bordered on obsequiousness—all of it genuine according to Safi’s magic. This was a man who had accepted his fate and his lack of any future. His mistress and bastard children were taken care of, since Safi wasn’t heartless, and so what was there for him to fight for?
“I have only one question for you tonight.”
“Hmm?” Henrick grunted, and he shifted in his chair. The wood creaked; it did not sound comfortable.
“There is a negotiation we have with Lusque. They have the better end of the deal, and I want to know why you agreed to it.”
“Ah.” He nodded and closed the book upon his lap. The title read, The Great Mystery of “Eridysi’s Lament.”“You mean the grain agreement?”
“Yes. They get the grain at such a deep discount. Why would you approve that?” This was a genuine question on Safi’s part. One that was not even the slightest bit pressing considering her plans for later tonight . . .
But a question that had gnawed at her for days—and would keep gnawing at her, even on the roads to the east of here. Because for all Henrick’s attempts to trick the world, he was not actually a fool. And he did nothing without adequate reason.
A fact which was proven yet again when he answered: “There was another deal for shipbuilders. It was old—before I came to the throne, and before my mother too—but it hinged upon intimidation. Build us these ships or we will invade was essentially how it read. The grain agreement was my attempt to smooth the waters. Literally.”
“Ah.” For a brief second, the pain behind Safi’s eyeball receded. There was not only logic in this contract, but diplomacy. “And where is the shipbuilding treaty? I haven’t seen it.”
Henrick lifted his hands. “That, Your Imperial Majesty, could be anywhere. There are so many places I kept such things.”
Safi sighed, and just like that, the headache punched back in. “Could you be a little bit more specific?”
Another shrug, this time with a wince that was neither genuine in its apology nor totally false.
And Safi heard her teeth grinding, a scritching sound to fill her skull. It was moments like these when Henrick revealed a bit of his old ways, although she didn’t think he was intentionally difficult. It was more like the pain in Safi’s foot that never quite went away after Empress Vaness had smashed all the bones with iron. Mostly the injury was healed, mostly Safi had adapted to a slight change in her gait to avoid irritating the old pains . . .
But sometimes she forgot. Sometimes she landed badly or twisted too fast because the muscles still remembered how they used to be.
That was how Henrick felt: he had been emperor so long, he could not fall into total complacency overnight, even if he wanted to.
Head on a pike! Eron would have barked were he sitting here. Safi only dropped her hand and said: “I’m leaving tonight, Henrick. In secret.”
He bowed his head, as if this were only to be expected. “You go to the Well?”
“Yes.” How strange that she could be honest with this man, but no one else in the lodge or her empire. “I’ll leave orders that you should remain as you are, but . . . well, accidents happen.”
“Accidents happen,” he acknowledged. “Thank you for the warning.” He bowed his head, a truthful gesture. “And I wish you luck on your journey. May I offer a word of advice?”
Safi twirled a hand. “Clearly you’re itching to do so.”
“Do not underestimate the Raider King. He amassed incredible power in a short amount of time because I let my attention get distracted.”
“You mean I distracted you.” Safi lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes.” A bounce of Henrick’s shoulder. “Whoever leaked the secret of your Truthwitchery so that it would reach my ear . . .” He opened his hands. “It helped the Raider King these past months.”
Indeed. Safi’s nostrils flared. She was certain the leaker had been Leopold. Why he’d done such a thing, however—that question still plagued her. Polly had worn the face of a friend for over a decade, carefully dancing around her magic . . .
Then he’d let his masks fall and his treachery land.
Just thinking of him made Safi’s head hurt twice as much as before. She cracked her neck. Worked her jaw. Then said with an air of nonchalance that wasn’t at all true: “Good-bye, Henrick. Do try to remember where that shipbuilding agreement is.”
“May I have another book?” he asked hastily, as if this was the greatest potential tragedy in his near future. “I will likely finish this latest stack tomorrow—”
“Don’t push your luck.” Safi glared. “And if you really need something to do, then try considering all the lives you’ve ruined. Then ponder how very lucky you are to have survived this long when almost every person in this lodge wants to remove your head from its shoulders.”
“Ah,” he replied.
“Ah,” she agreed, and now, pleased she’d said enough, Safi walked away. The locks magically bolted shut behind her. The Hell-Bards resumed their perfect square around the door.