After all, even dead men could have lives they didn’t want to lose.
TWO
This was not Azmir.
Safiya fon Hasstrel might have been a poor geography student, but even she knew this crescent-moon bay was not the capital of Marstok. Though weasels piss on her, she wished it were.
Anything would be more interesting than staring at the same turquoise waves she’d been staring at for the past week, so at odds with the dark, dense jungle beyond. For here, on the easternmost edge of the Contested Lands—a long peninsula of no-man’s-land that didn’t quite belong to the pirate factions in Saldonica and didn’t quite belong to the empires either—there was absolutely nothing of interest to do.
Paper whispered behind Safi, almost in time to the sea’s swell, and overtop it sang the infinitely calm voice of the Empress of Marstok. All day long, she worked through missives and messages on a low table at the center of her cabin, stopping only to update Safi on some complicated political alliance or recent shift in her empire’s southern borders.
It was excruciatingly dull, and the simple truth was, at least in Safi’s opinion, that pretty people should not be allowed to lecture. Nothing negated beauty faster than boredom.
“Are you listening, Domna?”
“Of course I am, Your Majesty!” Safi twirled around, her white gown billowing. She batted her eyelashes for an extra dose of innocence.
Vaness wasn’t buying it. Her heart-shaped face had hardened, and Safi didn’t think she was imagining how the empress’s iron belt rippled and grooved like two snakes sliding past each other.
Vaness was, according to scholars, the youngest, most powerful empress in all of the Witchlands history. She was also, according to legend, the strongest, most vicious Ironwitch who had ever lived, having felled an entire mountain when she was only seven years old. And, of course, according to Safi, Vaness was the most beautiful, most elegant woman who had ever graced the world with her presence.
Yet none of that mattered because gods below, Vaness was tedious.
No card games, no jokes, no exciting stories by Firewitch flame—nothing at all to make this wait more bearable. They’d dropped anchor here a week before, hiding first from a Cartorran cutter. Then from a Cartorran armada. Everyone had been braced for a naval battle …
That had never come. And while Safi knew this to be a good thing—war was senseless, as Habim always said—she’d also learned that waiting all day long was her own form of private hell.
Especially since her entire life had been upended two and a half weeks ago. A surprise betrothal to the Emperor of Cartorra had pulled her into a cyclone of conspiracy and escape. She’d learned her uncle, a man she’d spent her whole life loathing, was behind some massive, wide-scale plan to bring peace to the Witchlands.
Then, because Safi’s life wasn’t complicated enough already, she’d discovered that she and her Threadsister Iseult might be the mythical Cahr Awen, whose duty it was to heal magic across the Witchlands.
The empress cleared her throat emphatically, snapping Safi’s mind back to the present.
“My treaty with the Baedyed Pirates is incredibly important for Marstok.” Vaness lifted her eyebrows sternly. “It took years to come to an agreement with them, and thousands of lives will be saved because of it—you are not even listening now, Domna!”
This was not entirely untrue, yet Safi took offense at the empress’s tone. After all, she’d been wearing her best I-am-a-perfect-student face, and Vaness really ought to appreciate that. It wasn’t as if Safi ever bothered to school her features with her mentors, Mathew and Habim. Nor even with Iseult.
Safi’s throat tightened. Instinctively, she grabbed for the Threadstone resting against her collarbone. Every few minutes, she’d haul out the uncut ruby and stare into its flickering depths.
It was supposed to light up if Iseult was in danger. Yet not a flash so far. Not a peep. This had soothed Safi at first—it was all she’d had to cling to, really. Her only connection to her Threadsister. Her better half. Her logical get-Safi-out-of-trouble half. The person who never would have let Safi agree to join the empress.
In hindsight, Safi could see what a fool’s bargain she’d made, offering up her Truthwitchery so the empress could root out corruption in her Marstoki court. Safi had thought herself oh so noble and oh so self-sacrificing, for by joining Vaness, Safi was helping the dying nation of Nubrevna win trade.
The truth was, though, that she was stuck. On a ship. In the middle of nowhere. With only the Empress of Insipid for company.
“Sit with me,” Vaness ordered, cutting through Safi’s self-inflicted misery. “Since you clearly do not care for Baedyed politics, perhaps this message will interest you.”
Safi’s interest perked up. A message. Already this afternoon had turned more enticing than yesterday’s.
Resting her hands on her own iron belt, she crossed the lolling cabin to an empty bench opposite the empress. Vaness rifled through a stack of mismatched papers, the slightest scowl knitting her brow.
It brought to mind a different face often pinched with a frown. A different leader who, like the Empress of Marstok, put his people’s lives forever above his own.
Merik.
Safi’s lungs expanded. Her traitorous cheeks warmed. It was only one kiss they’d shared, so really, this blush could stop now.
As if answering her thoughts, Safi glimpsed a single name atop the page Vaness now withdrew: Prince of Nubrevna. Her pulse quickened. Maybe this was it—maybe, finally, she would have news of the world and the people she’d left behind.
Before she could learn anything or catch any words, though, the door to the empress’s cabin burst wide. A man rushed in, dressed as a sailor in Marstoki green. He spotted Safi and Vaness, and for two heartbeats, he simply stared.
False. The word fretted down Safi’s spine, her Truthwitchery tingling. A warning that what she saw was a lie. That duplicity now gaped at her while he lifted a single hand.
“Look out!” Safi tried to grab for the empress, tried to yank them both down for cover. But she was too slow. The sailor had pulled the trigger on his pistol.
It fired with a crack!
The shot never connected. It halted midair, a spinning ball of iron mere inches from the empress’s face.
Then a blade cut through the attacker’s back and a bloodied steel tip erupted from his belly. A singing slice that severed spine and organ and skin.
The sword ripped back. The body fell. The leader of Vaness’s personal guards appeared, dressed in black from head to toe, his blade dripping with blood.
The Adder High. “Assassin.” He offered the word so calmly. “You know what to do, Your Majesty.”
Without another word, he was gone.
The iron shot finally dropped from the air. It clattered to the floor and rolled, the sound lost to a sudden roaring of voices outside.
“Come,” was all Vaness said. Then, as if she feared Safi might not listen, she tightened the iron belt at Safi’s waist and yanked her toward the door with her magic.
Safi had no choice but to hurry after, despite the swelling horror in her throat. Despite the questions flinging across her mind.
They reached the assassin. Vaness slowed long enough to glance down. She sniffed dismissively, lifting her black skirts, and stepped across his corpse. Her feet tracked blood on the other side.
Safi, meanwhile, made sure to step around.
She also made sure not to look at the man’s dead eyes. Blue and staring straight at the caulked ceiling.
Outside, chaos had taken hold, yet Vaness faced it all without emotion. A flick of her hands and the iron shackles at her wrists melted outward into four thin walls that encased her and Safi. A shield. The empress then cut left across the deck. Voices hollered in Marstoki, all of them muffled and tinny.
Yet fully understandable. A second assassin was thought to be on board, and the Adders and the crew had to find him.
“Faster,” V
aness commanded Safi, and the belt towed harder.
“Where are we going?” Safi shouted back. She saw nothing inside this shield save the perfect, clear sky above.
Soon enough Safi had an answer. They reached the warship’s launch gig, stored astern and suspended for easy release into the waves. Vaness melted her front shield into a set of steps, which she immediately ascended.
Then they were in the swinging boat, iron spreading around the gig’s edges. Walls to keep them safe. But no roof, no protection against the voice now roaring, “He’s belowdecks!”
Vaness met Safi’s eyes. “Hold on,” she warned. Then her hands rose, chains clanked, and the gig lurched.
They dropped to the waves. Safi almost toppled off her seat, and spindrift sprayed in—followed by a sticky, salty breeze as Safi righted herself. It was all so calm, so quiet down here. Her knees bounced—how could it be so serene when violence ruled nearby?
The calm was a lie, for a single breath later, a burst of brilliant light stormed above the shields, glittery with glass and power. The boat flew back, tipping dangerously.
Last of all came the thunder. Violent. Scalding. Alive.
The ship had blown up.
Flames charged against the shield, yet the empress held the onslaught at bay. Paper-thin, the shields spread, coating the entire gig. Protecting Vaness and Safi against raging heat and cuffing the hell-fires to a muted roar.
Blood dripped from the empress’s nose, and her muscles quaked. A sign she could not hold her shield against the madness forever.
So Safi snatched up the oars from the gig’s belly. Not once did she consider if this was what she should do—just as she would not consider swimming when trapped beneath a tide. There were oars and a shore to aim for, so she acted.
Seeing what Safi intended, Vaness formed two holes in the shield for the oars. Smoke and heat gushed in.
Safi ignored it, even as her fingers burned and as her lungs filled with salty smoke.
Stroke after stroke, she carried Vaness and herself away from death, until at last the gig thunked against dark gravel. Until at last, the empress allowed her iron shield to fall. It coiled back into decorative shackles at her wrists, giving Safi a full view of the black flames burning before them.
Seafire.
Its dark thirst could not be slaked. Wind could not snuff it out. Water only fanned its resinous flames all the higher.
Safi scooped her arms around the flagging empress and dragged them both into the soft waves. She felt no relief at having survived this attack. No heady satisfaction surged through her because she’d made it to shore. She felt only a growing emptiness. A gathering dark. For this was her life now. Not boredom and lectures, but hell-flames and assassins. Massacres and endless flight.
And no one could save her from it but herself.
I could run right now, she thought, eyeing the long shoreline—the mangroves and palm trees beyond. The empress wouldn’t even notice. Probably wouldn’t care either.
If Safi aimed southwest, she would eventually reach the Pirate Republic of Saldonica. The only civilization—if it could be called that—and the only place to find a ship out of here. Yet she was almost certain that she could not survive in that cesspool of humanity alone.
Her fingers moved to her Threadstone, for now that Safi’s life hung on a knife’s edge, the ruby had finally flared to life.
If Iseult were here, then Safi could charge off into that jungle without a second thought. With Iseult, Safi was brave. She was strong. She was fearless. But Safi had no idea where her Threadsister was, nor any clue when she’d see her again—or if she’d see her again.
Which meant, for now, Safi’s chances were better with the Empress of Marstok.
Once the warship had burned to a flaming skeleton and the heat off the attack had drawn back, Safi turned to Vaness. The empress stood rooted to the ground, stiff as the iron she controlled.
Ash streaked her skin. Two lines of blood dried beneath her nose.
“We need to hide,” Safi croaked. Gods below, she needed water. Cold, soothing salt-free water. “The fire will draw the Cartorran armada to us.”
Ever so slowly, the empress cracked her gaze from the horizon and fixed it on Safi. “There might,” she growled, “be survivors.”
Safi’s lips pressed thin, but she didn’t argue. And perhaps it was that lack of argument that set Vaness’s shoulders to sinking ever so slightly.
“We aim for Saldonica,” was all the Empress of Marstok said next. Then she set off with Safi stalking behind, across the rocky beach and toward the gathering dark.
THREE
Stasis, Iseult det Midenzi told herself for the thousandth time since dawn. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.
Not that she could feel her fingers or her toes. She’d been sprinting downhill in this freezing mountain stream for what seemed an eternity. Twice she’d fallen, and twice she’d dunked herself head to foot.
But she couldn’t stop. She just had to keep running. Although to where had been a recurring question. If she’d read her map correctly all those hours ago, before the Cleaved had picked up her scent and started chasing, then she must be somewhere near the northernmost tip of the Contested Lands.
Which meant no settlements to take refuge in. No people to save her from what hunted behind.
For a week, Iseult had been traveling toward Marstok. The dead, lowlands around Lejna had eventually turned steep. Hilly. Iseult had never been anywhere that wasn’t flat enough to see the sky. Oh, she’d seen snowcapped peaks and craggy foothills in illustrations and she’d heard Safi describe them, but she never could have guessed how small they would make her feel. How cut off and trapped, when hills blocked her vision of the sky.
It was made all the worse by the complete absence of Threads. As a Threadwitch, Iseult could see the Threads that build, the Threads that bind, the Threads that break. A thousand colors to shimmer over her at every moment of every day. Except that without people, there were no Threads—and without Threads, there was no added color to fill her eyes, her mind.
Iseult was and had been alone for days. She’d trekked over pine needle carpets, and only the hundreds of trees creaking in the wind had kept her company. Yet no matter the terrain, Iseult had moved carefully. Never leaving a mark, never leaving a trail, and always, always moving east.
Until this morning.
Four Cleaved had picked up Iseult’s trail. She had no idea where they’d come from or how they had followed. This salamander-fiber cloak that the Bloodwitch Aeduan had given her two weeks ago was meant to block her scent from the Cleaved, yet it had, thus far, failed her. Iseult could feel the black corruption of Cleaved Threads still hunting.
And they gained ground with each passing minute.
I should wrap the Threadstone, Iseult thought vaguely, a distant thrum of inner dialogue to weave between her stamping, splashing footsteps. Wrap it in a bit of cloth so it doesn’t keep bruising me when I run.
She’d thought this particular refrain at least a hundred times now, for this wasn’t the first time she had found herself sprinting over rough forest terrain. Yet every time she’d finally been able to pause and duck beneath a log, she’d been so focused on catching her breath or straining her witchery for some sign of pursuing Threads that she’d forgotten to wrap the Threadstone. At least until it started bruising her again.
Other times, Iseult would tumble so deeply into daydreams that she’d forget her surroundings entirely for a bit. She’d imagine what it might be like to actually be the Cahr Awen.
Iseult and Safi had gone in the Origin Well of Nubrevna. They had touched its spring, and an earthquake had rolled through the land. I have found the Cahr Awen, Monk Evrane had then told Iseult and Safi, and you have awoken the Water Well.
For Safi, that title made perfect sense. She was sunshine and simplicity. Of course she would be the Light-Bringer half of the Cahr Awen. But Iseult was not the opposite of Safi. She wasn’t starshine or c
omplexity. She wasn’t anything at all.
Unless I am. Unless I can be.
Iseult would drift asleep with those thoughts to warm her.
Today, though, was the first time Threadstone had ever flashed—a sign Iseult was truly in danger. She just hoped that, wherever Safi might be right now, she wasn’t panicking at the sight of her own blinking stone.
Iseult also hoped that the stone flared only for her, for if it glowed because Safi was also threatened …
No, Iseult couldn’t worry like that. All she could do right now was run.
To think, it had been only two weeks since all hell-fire had broken loose in Lejna. Since Iseult had lost Safi to the Marstoks, had rescued Merik from a collapsed building, and had decided she would go after her Threadsister no matter what.
Iseult had scoured the ghost city of Lejna after that, until she had found Mathew’s abandoned coffee shop. There’d been food in the kitchen, and clean water too. She’d even found a sack of silver coins in the cellar.
When no one had come for her after eight days, though, Iseult had been forced to assume no one ever would. Dom Eron had likely heard of Safi’s kidnapping by the Empress of Marstok; Habim, Mathew, and Eron were likely headed after her now.
Leaving Iseult with no choice but to set off at a steady pace northeast, sleeping by day, traveling by night. For there were only two types of people in the forests of the Witchlands: those who tried to kill you and those who got you killed. Both camps were best avoided.
Yet in the darkness that Iseult traveled by, there were other things waiting. Shadows and breezes and memories she couldn’t lock away. She thought about Safi. She thought about her mother. She thought about Corlant and his cursed arrow that had almost taken her life. She thought of the Cleaved from Lejna and the teardrop-shaped scar they’d left behind.
And she thought of the Puppeteer, who tried endlessly to invade Iseult’s dreams. A Weaverwitch, she called herself, all while insisting Iseult was just like her. But the Puppeteer cleaved people and controlled their Threads. Iseult could—would—never do that.