Chapter 22
Caden fitz Grieg knew his own weaknesses. Intimately. And one in particular had always bothered him: he was not well educated. Wasn’t it bad enough to be a nobleman’s bastard? Why did he have to be an ignorant one too? He’d found ways to compensate, of course. He couldn’t recite every emperor that had come before Henrick III or what the architectural style around the palace courtyard was (he thought those curvy things might be called buttresses?), but he could read people. He knew what their emotions were as plainly as if they’d been written on their faces.
He’d asked Iseult det Midenzi—half in jest, half in seriousness—if this was what Thread magic was like. She’d said no, but then, in that thoughtful way of hers, she’d added: Though I suppose that makes you even more dangerous than we are. He hadn’t been sure what she meant by this, and now weeks later, he still didn’t know.
What he did know was that the Nomatsis didn’t like having him in their tribe.
And honestly, he couldn’t blame them.
Caden stood in the empty clearing where the tribe had disassembled their camp. Tents had been folded down to their component parts, then rolled tightly into packs for all the mules and horses. The cooking fires were long gone, no smoke to linger in the frostbitten air, and if the Nomatsis bustling about felt any disdain for the brown-haired, freckled Cartorran in their midst, they weren’t showing it. At least not in obvious ways.
Caden felt their secret glares. He felt their nervous confusion, and although he’d tried to ease it with a few smiles, he only ever got hostile stares in return.
Thank the hell-gates I’m not traveling with them anymore.
He’d been grateful for the idea, and he would have followed through. But then the Bloodwitch had shown up at midnight with Lev’s and Zander’s nooses. Monk Aeduan had found them right beside the Earth Well, so that was where Caden now planned to travel. And honestly, Iseult’s mother had seemed as relieved as Caden that he wouldn’t be staying with the tribe.
Gretchya had, however, insisted she at least give him the promised Threadstones before he go.
So here he stood, awkward, stiff, and cold while he waited for the apprentice to walk his way. She was beautiful. Unnaturally so. Like a sculpture carved from ice: he could look and appreciate the attention to detail, but ice didn’t make good company. “Come,” she said in accented Dalmotti. “We are ready.”
Caden nodded, and feeling the stares of literally everyone in the tribe on his back, he traced after Alma through the camp’s remains to the only two things still intact in these old ruins: a Threadwitching desk and low stool. Light and color flashed from tens of gemstones that lay before Iseult’s mother. She sat with her eyes closed until Caden was near. Then her hazel eyes snapped wide and fixed onto the space above his head.
One breath. Two. Her gaze lowered to meet his.
And Caden forced himself to stare. I know you see what I’m feeling, but I’m not afraid of you.
“We see what you feel,” Gretchya said as he came to a stop at the table, “but we do not see what you are thinking. Your mind, Hell-Bard, remains your own.”
These words didn’t comfort Caden, but rather than say, I’d prefer if my feelings were my own too, he simply bowed his head. “Tell me what I must do.”
It was Alma, again, who spoke: “In order to find your Thread-family, we will need to craft three Threadstones. One will be for you, then two will be for your friends.”
“Choose,” Gretchya commanded, “three stones. Let your hands guide your arm.”
Don’t hands always guide arms? Caden frowned at the jewels. The attention of the tribe watching him was like a frozen wind he couldn’t wriggle out of. If he thought he’d felt tall and discordant in the middle of the camp, now he felt like the gap in a coat of armor.
He knew of Threadstones, of course. His fellow soldiers had loved to acquire them—sneakily, since Nomatsis weren’t welcome in Cartorra. For safety, for love, for beauty. But Caden had never had one for himself. And he’d never wanted one.
“May I touch the stones?”
“Yes,” Gretchya answered. “In fact, it is better if you do.”
Nodding, Caden reached out with both hands. At first, he felt nothing beyond general foolishness. He was waving his hands over a bunch of precious stones in an absolutely freezing forest while people gawped at him and pretended they didn’t. To make it that much stranger, he would have gladly stolen every one of these jewels as a child. Even today, so many years later, there was a part of him that itched to take things that weren’t his—fine things that would buy his mother food and firewood . . . and buy himself a warm meal or twenty.
As Caden thought about that childhood—about how he’d actually met Zander on the same streets, well before either of them had been pressed into the Hell-Bards—Caden felt a stirring at his fingertips. It was a subtle warmth in all this cold, and it made him think of sunshine and green things. His left hand moved down, down, seemingly all on its own, before plucking up an emerald.
Meanwhile Caden’s other hand felt tingly. Scratchy. Like the fuzzing of wool before an electric crack! is set free. Then the spark came, and it was above an opal.
Both stones were rough, uncut, muted in color and wild in shape. And both felt instantly right as soon as he grasped them. Ah, his heart seemed to say. Here is your Thread-family.
“Well done,” Alma murmured, and for the first time since meeting her, Caden sensed a slight waver of emotion. She was excited he’d found the stones. She liked this part of her job.
“One for you still,” Gretchya reminded. No feelings roiled off of her, no indication of how she’d known thesestones belonged to Caden’s friends and not to him.
Caden drew in a long breath. “Good enough,” he replied. More to himself than to them. It was what his mother had always said: Good enough, Cay. Good enough. And he’d liked the solid, reliable way she’d said it. As if, although life might not be perfect, perfect was never what she’d wanted anyway.
His hands paused over a red rock that might have been a ruby.
He swallowed.
Clearly these gems—or perhaps these witches—were like fishing lines. They reeled memories to the surface. His past, his person, his promises, and he’d be lying if he said this process didn’t frighten him. It sounded so very much like being bound to the Loom. Woven into something completely outside himself.
Except it all happened so quietly, so seamlessly. While Gretchya grabbed the opal and the emerald, Alma retrieved the ruby. Then they both withdrew spools of colored thread from large pockets in their coats and with fingers that were deft despite the cold, they wove and they wound. They whispered and they worked.
Bind and bend, build and blossom, family fills the heart.
They spoke in Nomatsi, of course, but Caden wasn’t entirely new to that language. Owl had spoken so much of it to Zander in Praga, and that giant man with his kind heart forever projecting outward had spent hours practicing it whenever he could.
Alma finished her stone first, since she only made one Threadstone. The Threadstone that was meant to be Caden’s. With small, focused movements, she tied off a braid of dark and light green threads, attached them to a leather thong, and handed it to him.
Now all of the tribe was openly watching, and many people had clustered in like an audience. Caden couldn’t decide if it was better than the sneaky scrutiny or not.
Alma rolled onto her toes so she could drape the threaded necklace around Caden’s neck. He had to bend deeply so she could reach him. Her breath ruffled his hair. She smelled like campfire and laurel. Then the leather was around his neck . . . .
And he felt exactly the same as he had a few seconds before. If some great magic had just happened, he wasn’t sensing it.
“Rubies,” Alma explained, “stand for honor and love, which you must have in abundance. And Threads in these shades represent focus and determination—which you will need to find your family.”
Caden swallowed. “And . . . the emerald?” he asked. “The opal?” Gretchya had just finished tying pink threads around the stones, and now she handed them to Alma.
“Emeralds stand for certainty,” Alma explained. “The man this stone represents is like an anchor in a storm. Opals, meanwhile, are for loyalty, and the woman this connects to would die for those she loves. The threads around both stones are the shade of deep, unbreakable family.”
Alma moved in once more, and Caden leaned down again to meet her. “I don’t feel any different,” he told her quietly. “Should the stones do something?”
“They are.” Alma made a slight, barely there smile. So tiny, Caden was certain only he spied it before it smoothed away. “The stones are now bound to your Thread-family. That means you can find them.”
“Right.” Caden wasn’t entirely sure what else to say. If he felt nothing while he wore these, then that wasn’t going to do much for him as he trekked west into the Ohrins. If anything, three gems of such size were going to make him a prime target for the criminals he’d once aspired to be.
“Well, uh, thank you,” he started. “I appreciate the stones, and—” He shut up. The stones were suddenly winking in the morning light. At first he thought it was sunlight playing over them, reflecting color into his eyes. But there was no sunlight today; the clouds let none through.
And now Alma was pushing in close again.
“They’re in trouble,” he rasped, as she grabbed all three in a fist. “That’s what that means, isn’t it?” Caden remembered how Safi’s Threadstone had warned her whenever Iseult’s life was at risk. “What do I do?”
“We follow,” Alma answered, eyes still shut and her face taut with concentration. “And quickly, for we do not know how much time we have.”
“We?” Caden asked. But the question was lost in the sudden clatter at the desk as Gretchya shot to her feet.
“But what of Saldonica?” she demanded. “The tribe cannot wait for you, Alma.” Gretchya spoke Nomatsi, but there were enough words there for Caden to understand.
Just as he understood what Alma replied: “I know.” Her eyes opened, but rather than look at her tribe’s leader, she gazed only at Caden with eyes of pure silver and ice. “I do not expect you to wait for me, Gretchya, but I also cannot let this Hell-Bard go alone. I will take him where these Threadstones lead.”
Ah. It wasn’t at all what Caden had wanted, and yet it was also deeply and desperately what he needed. “I will make sure she gets to Saldonica,” he told Gretchya in Dalmotti. “Whatever it takes, I will get her there.”
Gretchya didn’t respond. Nor did the rest of the tribe. If Caden had been able to see Threads, he imagined they would all be stretched like bowstrings about to snap. Until Alma, again, offered him a secret, almost-nothing smile.
“Tell me what to do,” he said to her. The stones were still blinking, beams of color to flash through gaps in her fist. “I don’t want to waste a single moment.”
“Nor do I.” Alma turned from him to bow, hands at her sides, at Gretchya. “I will see you again soon. May Moon Mother light your path.”
“And may Trickster never find you,” Gretchya replied.
It was all they exchanged before Alma laid her cold hands on Caden’s wrist. “Hurry, Hell-Bard. There is no time to waste.” She pulled, Caden moved, and the sun rose, unseen, behind thick clouds above them.
Dear Uncle,
Iseult and I are leaving to heal the Well. I know you’ll send troops after us, but please don’t. You won’t catch us—not before we reach Poznin, anyway. And the movement of your troops will only alert the Raider King that something comes his way.
You trained me for this moment. You, Mathew, and Habim. And you trained Iseult too, claiming it was because no one else could protect me like my Thread-family . . . But that wasn’t the whole story, was it? I see that now. My magic sees that now.
You knew all along what we were and what we were meant to do.
So please let us do it. Let us heal the final Well on our terms as the Cahr Awen. And if I don’t make it back, I hereby decree that you are my heir. A bit unorthodox, I know, but you’re the only family I have, and you’re a much better leader than I ever could be.
Just don’t screw it up.
—Safi
P.S. The crown is in my closet at the bottom of the trunk filled with those hideous gowns you insisted an empress needed.
P.P.S. Don’t kill Henrick. He’s actually pretty useful, if you give him enough books to read.
Kullen,
There are two new doorways in the mountain. The portal kind like Eridysi made a thousand years ago. On top of that, the old doorways have reopened again—the ones I destroyed two months ago.
It shouldn’t be possible. I broke the standing stones in the meadow beside the Sightwitch Sister Convent. I severed the Threads that bound Sirmaya’s magic to those megaliths. That power was gone. The doorways were shut. So who could have opened them again? And who could have built new ones, too?
Part of me wants to leave the mountain right now and check the Standing Stones. See if I can find a clue. To build a magic doorway, you need a stone from the destination—a big stone. And then you need to anchor Sirmaya’s Threads to that stone. Eridysi figured out how to do it a thousand years ago, and it’s not easy magic. In fact, no one but a Sightwitch should be able to do it, and since I am the last Sightwitch Sister . . .
I cannot leave my work in the Crypts to go searching for answers. Things are so unstable in the mountain. Quakes rattle through every few hours, and the sleeping ice covers everything. Any magic it can find, it tries to claim.
I only know of the new doors because the Rook has brought me a map—the map I drew for you. But someone has added these doorways. I sent the Rook to check, and he tells me in his bird way that they are real.
Goddess, I wish you’d wake up. I wish Sirmaya would release you. But now I’m really starting to fear that will never happen. Not while she needs every scrap of power she can claim. Otherwise, all the Witchlands will die. All the Witchlands will cleave.
But you are my focus. The taro cards tell me so, every day. Lady Fate, the Cleaved Man, and the Paladin of Hounds. That is all they will ever show me when I draw from the deck. So I will stay focused on you.
You’re important. I always knew that, and I only grow more certain of it each day.
I love you.
—Ryber
Chapter 22
For three days, Iseult pushed everyone as hard as their horses would allow. After all, Eron must have sent people after them; they needed to be so far ahead, his riders could never catch up.
In some ways, it was good they had nothing more than three Nomatsi packs to sustain them. They were lighter, faster. And in some ways, it was very good they had Aeduan. Without their food supplies, now burned to ash, his magic let them find rabbits and fowl that would otherwise stay hidden in the snow.
Occasionally, the trio passed camps at the roadside. Sometimes, they spotted smoke on the horizon. Twice, they found traveling caravans of traders. Yet no one ever bothered them; no one ever asked, Why are you traveling east into war?
On the fourth day, the gusts that had howled off the Windswept Plains softened, and for the first time since leaving the imperial lodge, they let their horses slow to a walking pace. But clouds hung like frowns on the horizon, and it felt to Iseult like the brewing storm waited for a moment when she might look the other way. Then it would strike with all its might.
It reminded Iseult of the storm Corlant had conjured, when he had cleaved the very sky to chase her.
On the fifth day, they rode hard again. Poznin was close now, three days at most if this blizzard would hold. The lands rolled with uneven, unpredictable hills, as if some god had left their shallow footprints across the plains. It made seeing ahead difficult.
As did the grass that hugged the highway, high as their horses’ chests and spanning as far as their eyes could see.
Halfway through the fifth day, they spotted smoke. Black coils had blended into the storm clouds. Aeduan drew up his mount, letting Iseult and Safi trot to a stop beside him. Then they all waited, their horses’ breaths pluming into the cold as their masters gazed ahead and wind beat against them.
That same wind scattered the smoke, taking thick, black clots and shredding it to papery tendrils.
“That’s more than just a campfire,” Safi said. Her Threads were a muddied mixture of suspicion and worry.
“And the highway goes right through it.” Aeduan, whose face was hidden within his Carawen hood, pointed to the road’s dip and rise. It would indeed take them directly into the smoke and fires. “We will have to circle around.”
Neither Iseult nor Safi responded to this. Instead they met each other’s eyes. “Someone might be hurt,” Iseult said. Cold stung her cheeks and nose.
Safi lowered the scarf across her face. Her freckled cheeks shone red. “We can’t risk finding that out, Iz.”
Iseult’s nose twitched. She knew Safi was right, but that didn’t make it better. Either we lose thousands of lives now, Leopold had said in the Dreaming, or we lose the entirety of the Witchlands when Sirmaya dies. Tell me which sounds preferable to you.
“All right.” Iseult nodded to Aeduan. “Lead us off the road.”
He bobbed his head, eyes flaring red within the shadows of his hood. Then he steered Surefoot into the tall grass. Safi followed atop Dandelion, while Iseult took up the tail with Cloud. This was their usual arrangement, for Aeduan could reach ahead for blood scents while Iseult could reach behind for Threads. The grass was a new challenge, though, slowing them severely.
Which turned out to be the point.
Threads suddenly wavered at the edge of Iseult’s magic, closing in fast. “Raiders!” she shouted at the same moment Aeduan roared, “Attack!”
Then the raiders were there. Tens of Threads zooming in from all sides in an ambush that couldn’t be escaped. Some Threads bore magics. Some only a thrill of cruelty. Yet all wore a shade like violent iron, and there was no stopping the response of Iseult’s magic in kind. The bad side of it that liked to sing, Sever, sever, twist and sever.
She squashed it down. Hard. That magic was only for final measures. Only in situations of last resort. Iseult had blades; she would use them.
Aeduan was already off his mount. Safi too, their blades unsheathing as figures manifested in the grass, hulking shapes lit by brutality.
Threads that break, Threads that die.
“Aeduan!” Iseult shouted. “Can you freeze them before they arrive?”
Aeduan glanced back. His hood had fallen, his eyes glowed red. “Some, but not all.”
“Then do it,” Safi barked, her Threads blazing with imperial expectation.
“Yes.” Aeduan stretched out his arms. His eyes flamed so red it sent lines across his face. And Iseult watched as the nine nearest raiders became statues within the golden grass. Their Threads burst with panic and surprise.
But they didn’t pass out. Instead of Aeduan’s usual magic to dominate them, his hands began to quaver—and already, there were more raiders crashing this way.
Iseult rounded toward Cloud. The horse sensed the tide of violence barreling toward her, but she was trained for war. She made no movement as Iseult freed her weapons from the saddle. First a moon scythe of sharpened steel. Then a second scythe from a mountain bat’s claw. It was the only remnant of Owl that Iseult had, and every time she held the hilt—every time she felt the claw radiate with ancient Threads of earth and stone—she thought of the little girl who wasn’t a little girl at all.
Long ago, when the gods walked among us.
Iseult turned to Safi, and without another word, the Threadsisters launched themselves at the first raiders finally toppling through the frozen grass.
All Safi saw were Red Sails. Because of course it was Red Sails. When the slaughter was at its ugliest, they were always near.
And this slaughter was ugly. Eight raiders stormed from the grass toward Safi and Iseult, and there was no missing the blood and soot across their vicious faces. Whatever that smoke was from, people had died there—and here were their murderers.
Two men at the front split apart to try to flank Safi and Iseult. Fools. She and Iseult had been trained for this. The reactions lived inside them, written onto their bones by a Firewitch general who accepted no failure. It was a dance, a rhythm, a gliding arrangement of steps that required two partners. And although it might have been months since Safi had fought with Iseult, they were still Threadsisters. Still sun and moon, light and shadow, two halves forever orbiting each other.
The raiders reached the girls.
Initiate. Safi ducked for one man’s knees with her shoulder. He went down while her blade went up. Complete. Iseult bounded over Safi, both moon scythes extended toward the second raider.
Neither man had time to react before steel sliced through and blood sprayed. Hot blood that seemed to sizzle the instant it was exposed to air—as did the organs oozing out with it.
Their bodies hit the snow, but two more raiders were already leaping up from the grass. Safi and Iseult twirled toward each other. Iseult swiped with her mountain bat claw at the first. Safi attacked with steel at the second.
And somehow, as the incoming raider growled at Safi with savagery, as his blood-smeared cutlass swung at Safi’s head, she felt her own sword become the truest steel that had ever sung. It was as if her magic responded in that moment, reaching down her arm, her fingers, sliding into the hilt and blade.
She’d bound her witchery before. First, when she’d made the Truth-lens in Marstok. It had required careful study, using the book Understanding Threads to make the correct knots and braids, loops and weavings.
Second, when she’d turned the lens into a necklace. She’d only had intuition and memory then. It had been slow work, but satisfying.
And now, here she was a third time, and it required almost no effort at all. Here were the Threads of her power; here was the Arlenni Loop, exactly as she’d once seen it on the page. Then the Vergedi knot—harder to make, but stronger in the end.
All of this happened in the space between seconds. The stutter between heartbeats. Then leather and fur split apart, followed by muscle and bone. With a single, frictionless movement, Safi carved off the man’s head.
He went down, his head following a split second later—and with the same expression of shock scored onto it that Safi must be wearing as well. How had she done that? And without any thought at all, only instinct?
No time to wonder or contemplate. Another raider struck, lashing out with a long, pointed blade. But when his steel connected with Safi’s parry, the blade snapped in two.
This was as unexpected as the decapitation—although it shouldn’t have been. She’d imprinted her magic onto the steel. Now it was a blade so true, nothing could stand in its way.
Safi kicked the man in the groin. Flung a flat fist to his chin. Then she levered her leg behind his, and a heartbeat later, the man hit the ground beside his fellows.
The snow in the clearing had turned red. “Incoming,” Iseult yelled, darting away from their miniature battlefield as another clump of raiders tumbled from the grass.
Three froze mid-stride, then collapsed. Safi didn’t need to look back to know Aeduan had joined them. His magic, strangely weak before, seemed to have returned in full force. Which was why, rather than careen directly for the remaining five raiders as Iseult was doing, Safi cut left toward an exposed flank where raiders coalesced in the grass.
Two toppled toward her. They were easily dispatched with her sword that could apparently slice through spine and steel now. True, true, true.
But that was when a third raider whom Safi hadn’t noticed—a man who must have come at her from behind—sprang. The force of his tackle crumpled them both to the earth. Knocked her sword from her grasp. She rolled and wiggled, but her winter furs slowed her.
The man’s face was the only part of him Safi could see. It was thick with stubble. His breath—hot, foul—panted over her. He was trying to pin her to the ground, both his hands pushing her arms into cold tundra.
So Safi let him. For one breath, she relaxed fully and let him get into the position he thought would give him power. False, her magic seemed to laugh. False, false, lies. Then the breath had ended and the man was leering down. Spit fell from his lips. He wasn’t much older than she.
Safi grinned at him before bracing her feet against the man’s, then hefting up her hips and flipping him sideways. He fell, and Safi used the moment to roll the other way. He grabbed for her legs. His fingers clamped onto her calf, and he tried to drag her back. But she had her sword now.
Pivot. Swing. It cut through the arm that held her. At the elbow, clean as a butcher’s knife through fresh meat.
He screamed. His blood sprayed.
And it was then, in the frantic moments while Safi scrabbled to her feet and another raider sprinted toward her, that she saw something she hadn’t noticed on the other raiders: this man’s blood wasn’t truly red. It was too dark. It should have been scarlet upon the snow, but instead it was almost black.
He was cleaving.
No time to assess what that might mean for this fight. The next raiders had arrived, and Iseult was facing a woman who was just as nimble and fast as she was. Worse, she was drawing a Firewitched pistol from her belt. She aimed. Safi dove. The single shot cracked out.
Pain lanced across Safi’s left shoulder. Down to her fingers, up into her skull. Had she been holding her sword in this hand, she would have dropped it. As it was, though, nothing vital was damaged—so despite pain bright and burning, the fight still pumped through her like a sunrise.
Safi ran for the woman with the pistol as the woman tried to reload. The cold made her slow. Or maybe the intensity of it all made Safi fast. Either way, she reached the woman before the pistol winched high again.
“Big mistake,” Safi snarled, and in two arcs of her blade, she carved the pistol from the raider’s grasp—and carved away half her hand too. Then she aimed the sword at the woman’s neck.
Iseult, her cheeks flushed and blood-splattered, now staggered to Safi’s side. “Get on the ground,” she ordered the raider. “Now. Or we will put you there.”
Toot toot! A new ship has sailed 😄