Reden squinted against the sun. “Because Grendi has very little tolerance for a Commander who displeases her. And she’s very easy to displease. I lingered longer than most. Still, my time was limited. If I hadn’t left with you, I doubt I would have made it much longer.”
She fired. “Did I hit it?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What were you aiming for?”
“The water.” She grinned.
He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure you killed it.”
She poured more powder into the barrel and promptly fumbled the ball. It fell on her foot and rolled across the deck. Using one of Joshen’s favorite curse words, she limped after it.
When she finally caught the ball, she looked up to find Reden watching her, one side of his mouth crooked up.
“Go ahead and laugh,” she said with a frown.
He held his hand over his mouth. “I’m not laughing.”
She considered throwing the musket ball at his head. Instead, she finished loading the pistol and fired. Despite the wool, her ears rang.
“Not bad. I want you to practice midmorning and midday to increase your speed, until the movements become habit.” He studied her. “Why did Joshen take you below decks?”
She rubbed her face. “He bought me a horse. A gorgeous, fast, dangerous horse.”
Reden’s brow rose. “The palomino?”
She nodded.
Reden took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, the man knows his horses.”
If any woman in love with Joshen had to love horses by default, maybe that extended to his friends, too.
“Reden?” she said softly. “Joshen doesn’t want me to be here.”
Reden studied her sidelong. “How so?”
She fired again. “He doesn’t want me going to Tarten. I’m not sure he can deal with all this.”
“Give him some time. He’s still trying to find his footing—to figure out how to balance protecting you with letting you go into dangerous situations.”
Someone cleared his throat behind them. “When you’re moving forward, you have to aim a little behind the target to compensate for the ship’s speed.” Senna recognized Joshen’s voice. She turned to find him watching her, his arms crossed over his chest and his expression tense.
Senna rubbed her forehead in frustration.
Reden nodded towards her pistol. “Keep practicing. I’ll be right back.”
He took Joshen’s arm and steered him away.
Senna looked around for another ball to load in the pistol. Reden must have taken them with him. She tentatively approached the hatch.
She could see the edge of Reden’s back and hear his tense voice. “Fine. Don’t tell me what happened. But I’ll tell you this as your friend, you’re losing her.”
“I’m trying to protect her!”
“You’re her Guardian. You protect her from danger. You can question her plans, her choices, but you don’t threaten her. You don’t force her. You follow where she leads and clean up what you can.”
“Even if it kills her?” Joshen’s voice had grown threatening.
Reden didn’t back down. “Being a Witch means putting herself in danger for the world’s sake if needs be. That’s why they have Guardians.”
Joshen didn’t speak for a moment. “I love her, Reden. I can’t stand by and watch her nearly die. Not again.”
“So it’s selfishness, is it?”
“What? No, I—”
“You can’t stand watching her get hurt so you betrayed her trust? ’Cause that sounds like selfishness to me.”
Joshen was silent. “I can’t risk her.”
“She’s already at risk. Accept it and stop being a fool, before it’s too late.”
Reden turned to go up the stairs and caught Senna watching. He gave her a reprimanding look.
She retreated back to the side of the ship before Joshen could see her. “You took all the balls,” she said sheepishly.
Glancing at the pouch at his hip, Reden grunted. “So I did.”
“Thanks for speaking with him.”
Reden nodded. “You two need each other.” He gestured for Joshen to join them. “You know the pistol well enough. Let’s see how you do in combat.”
Over the next few hours, Joshen taught her how to escape a hold. Specifically, how to block a gag by holding her wrist to her lips. The goal was to protect her song, which would be her primary weapon.
The hurt between them was like a slow poison. Cleansing it would take time, and time was something neither of them had. So they studiously ignored their pain.
Joshen drilled the same four sequences over and over.
“Can’t we learn something new?” Senna finally asked.
He circled her. “No time. Better you learn a few things well.”
At lunch time, Senna was relieved for an excuse to stop. She retrieved food for the four of them, making a cup of soothing tea for Mistin’s throat.
Joshen helped her carry it to where Mistin was singing even more croakily than normal. Reden stood beside her and didn’t seem to mind the sound at all. She finished the verse and he said something. She laughed, a sound that was beautiful even if her voice was not. He noticed them and touched Mistin’s elbow. She took the tea with obvious gratitude.
Senna passed out travel bread, apples, and salt pork. “Call it a day, Mistin. The ship might need you if I’m stuck in Tarten.”
Mistin took a bite of her apple. “That will be difficult, as I’m coming with you.”
Cord appeared, his own lunch in hand, and sat beside Senna. She had to suppress the urge to squirm.
“Are you sure you can keep up?” Joshen asked as he took the other side.
“I’ll be on a horse, idiot.” Mistin glared at him.
Cord chuckled.
Mistin transferred her glare to Cord. Both men clamped up and stared at the deck.
Reden grinned. “In a fight between you three, I’d bet on her.”
Senna handed Mistin the pistol she’d been practicing with, and that settled it.
After they’d eaten, Reden gestured for Senna and Joshen to join him in the captain’s cabin. Once they were behind closed doors, Reden said, “Senna, we’ll be arriving in Tarten soon. I need to know you’ll obey me if I tell you to run. If I say return to the ship, you do it.”
“Of course I will.”
“Even if it means leaving someone behind.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he spoke before she could. “Sometimes men get trapped, and there’s no way to rescue them, not without losing more men than you save. It’s part of the risk we’ve all undertaken.”
The responsibility shot through her. Joshen and Reden were risking their lives to protect her. All they asked in return was that she obeyed them. They both watched her, and she knew they wouldn’t go on unless she said it. “If you and Joshen both tell me to go, I will.”
Reden nodded. Joshen didn’t react at all.
“Land ahead!” came a shout from outside.
Senna hurried to the bow. Captain Parknel came to stand beside them.
“How much longer?” Joshen asked.
Parknel judged the distance through his spy glass. “We’ll have to travel up coast for a bit. Sometime early morning.”
Senna watched the brown smudge in the distance. “So it begins.”
21. Cursed
Everything was dead. What was once a veritable jungle was now little more than brittle, brown rot that no hint of a breeze stirred. Since the Four Sisters had been commanded to lie dormant, there hadn’t been so much as a draft since the Witches fled these shores months ago. The stale air made the stink of the moldering corpses dotting the landscape so much stronger.
Unable to believe she had caused this desolation, Senna stepped forward, the dry vegetation crunching like brittle bones underfoot. She searched desperately for some signs of life between the mountains covering the landscape like overturned urns. Cord and Mistin were already out there, scouting for signs of dan
ger. She was glad for Cord’s absence, at least. His every gaze felt like an unwanted caress.
Joshen rested a large hand on her shoulder. His eyes never stopped searching the colorless landscape. “Senna?”
He couldn’t understand this devastation the way she could. Since her senses had expanded to include the Four Sisters—Earth, Water, Plants, and Sunlight—she felt their absence like a womb suddenly void of life. “Did I really do this, Joshen?”
He finally spared her a glance. “You weren’t the only one. And none of you had a choice.”
Senna knew that wasn’t true. There was always a choice. She could have let Chancellor Grendi kill her and the remaining Witches, and the world would have continued on. For a little while at least.
From atop his own horse, Reden held out her gelding’s reins.
She eyed the palomino as it side-stepped nervously. “Are you sure about him?”
Joshen leaned in and spoke low enough that only she heard. “Senna, I’m going to give you every advantage I can.”
That horse didn’t feel like much of an advantage. “So Sunny’s your backup plan if three Guardians and Mistin fail?”
Joshen didn’t answer. Senna sighed. She missed the gentle eyes of her old horse, Knight. “All right, but if he throws me, I’m taking Cord’s horse.” The animal he’d brought for the journey had an ugly, bald face but a gentle nature. Hiking up her skirt, Senna climbed into the saddle.
Beside them, Reden finally spoke for the first time since seeing his ruined homeland. “We should keep moving. There are probably spies watching us.”
Senna looked back at him. “How do you know?”
He stared at the landscape. “It’s what I would have done.”
At his very core, Reden was a soldier—one of the best—so he didn’t show emotions the way a normal man would. But they were still there, if you knew him well enough. She’d spent enough time with him over the past months to see his guilt in the unyielding muscles of his face, and in the stiff way he sat in his saddle. After all, he’d helped her destroy his homeland.
“It’s not too late, Senna. We can still turn back,” Joshen said.
“I spent too much time on Haven doing the smart thing,” she replied. “Now I’m going to do the right thing.”
Reden didn’t say anything more. He wasn’t the type to argue. Once a decision had been made, he simply followed it through to the end—whatever that end may be.
They took the agreed-upon formation, Cord and Mistin scouting ahead, Reden in front of Senna, Joshen behind. As they heeled their horses into a gallop, Senna looked back at the Sea Witch anchored just off shore. She wished she were back on it, that she didn’t have to face the devastation she’d forced onto Tarten.
Moving at a fast clip, they retraced the path she and Joshen had taken months ago. Senna couldn’t help but notice the differences. Before, the road was choked with plants vying for sunlight. Now it was bare. The little hut they’d passed before, the one with the cooking fire in front, was empty, the fire pit filled with gray ash the wind hadn’t even bothered to blow away.
And here, where they’d turned to avoid the soldiers, the road was littered with decaying plants, none of which had been crushed by footfalls. Sunny leapt a fallen tree, his passing stirring the withered leaves still clinging to the branches. The barn they’d hidden inside so long ago was plainly visible now that the foliage wasn’t there to block it from view. It too was abandoned.
Their mounts were breathing hard and dripping with sweat. The small party stopped to let the horses rest for a while before riding on again.
Senna wondered where all the people had fled.
Cord met them not far from Kaen’s home. “Mistin and I have scouted the surrounding area. It’s clear.”
Senna trotted Sunny the rest of the way to the house. Ghosts of memories rose up from around her. She jumped from the saddle. Joshen and Reden moved ahead of her, their muskets primed.
She trailed after them through the two-room hut. At first, she was blinded by the darkness. Opening her eyes wide, she slowly turned around. Their movements had stirred up the dust. The house had the musty smell of a long-abandoned building. Her eyes watered and she sneezed.
Trying to breathe through the guilt crushing her chest, she hurried towards the side room. She started when a rat ran across her foot. She forced herself to push the door aside. The sleeping mats were missing, as was the food that had been in the woven baskets.
They really were gone. Senna bit her bottom lip and willed herself not to fall apart.
Joshen headed back outside. “I’ll go check the tunnel. If Kaen left us word, that’s where it would be.”
Senna closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the crumbling wall. Where were Kaen and his family? What about his sister, Ciara?
“They still might be alive,” Reden said as if reading her mind.
Senna straightened to find him staring at her. “You knew,” she said softly. “You knew when you joined us that our curse would do this to your land.”
Reden hesitated before giving a curt nod. “I did.”
“Then why? Why did you help us?”
He studied the landscape beyond the door, no doubt comparing the desolation to the bursting life that had existed mere months ago. “Higher law, Senna. If the Witches died, there wouldn’t be anyone to control nature. And eventually everything would die.”
He’d traded his homeland for the world. He had more courage than she did. “We didn’t have to curse the land, forbid the storms, stop the seeds from germinating,” she said.
“You had to weaken Tarten and more importantly, Grendi, or she would have destroyed you.” He said it with so little feeling.
It was such a vivid contrast to Senna, who felt like she was drowning in emotions. She stepped past Reden, back into the stagnant sunlight. “Well then, I think it’s weak enough. It’s time I did something about it.”
From his position as lookout, Cord twisted in the saddle to shoot her a look of disbelief. “I thought you needed a whole choir for something like that.”
“She does,” Mistin said softly.
Senna winced. She still didn’t understand what was happening to her—why she’d grown stronger since consuming Espen’s song. So much stronger. Why the night they’d escaped from the island her song alone had been as strong as a hundred Witches’. Or why that power had since abandoned her. “I’ll do what I can.”
Mistin nodded. “I’ll help you.”
Cord shifted the horse’s reins from one hand to another and didn’t answer.
Reden studied her. “You go airborne and everyone within five leagues will see you.”
“I know.” Senna twisted around, searching for anything resembling a circle of trees. There was nothing. And even if she could, she didn’t know how to sing one into existence. Their song wouldn’t be as effective without one, but it would have to do.
She listened to the music, or rather the lack thereof. But the Four Sisters were hurting, which meant they were here, cowering from the death and destruction that had been forced upon them. Senna hummed, trying to coax them out. And like wounded animals, they came.
Tipping back her head, she sang in a commanding voice, with Mistin accompanying her.
Wind lift me high,
That my song reach to’rds the sky.
They repeated the song until the wind tugged Senna upward. She needed it to funnel her words up and out. Her skirt swirled around her legs, and she grew lighter. The wind twisted her hair skyward until she thought it must look like a golden candle flame.
She dug deep, searching for the power that had been there before. There. A little pulse of it. To her surprise, her feet left the ground. When she was high enough to see across the tops of the rounded mountains, she switched songs.
I revoke from this land the Witches’ decree,
That all storms and plants shall cease to be.
Come to me, storms, gently dampen the earth. r />
Seeds swell with water to rekindle rebirth.
She sang the song over and over, hoping the Witches in Haven wouldn’t notice the decree had been partially lifted. If they did, even from across the ocean, their songs would countermand her own.
When the wind had set her down and left her, she closed her eyes and probed the Four Sisters—Earth, Water, Plants, and Sunlight—with her mind. To her relief, the land no longer felt hollow. She felt a breeze on her skin and the presence of water and plants again. Not as strong as it should be—more like a sluggish resurrection than a full revival. But where there had been only a void, there was now something.
The decree had been partially removed. “It’s not right that so much depends on something as fickle as mankind,” Senna commented.
“You were able to tap into that power again,” Reden said.
All of them stared at her in wonder—staring at her as if she were something more. She sighed. “Not as strong as when I was on the island though. If it had been, I could have restored the land instead of just lifting the curse.”
“It was a hundred times more powerful than it should have been,” Mistin said.
“Senna,” Joshen called as he jogged towards her.
Glad for the change of subject, she looked at him. “Was there a note?”
Nodding, he stopped to catch his breath. “They’ve gone. We can only hope they’re still alive.”
Senna let him steer her towards her butter-colored gelding. “What did it say?”
Joshen handed her the brittle parchment. She carefully unfolded it and read Kaen’s scratchy handwriting.
My network spies say the Witches have cursed Tarten. That the rains will not come nor the seeds take root. From the way everything is dying, I believe them. We are taking what we can—including the two horses you left—and heading seaward. If nothing else, the ocean should provide fish. From there, we travel north. I’ll try to convince the Witch Friends and any I meet to come with us.
Be warned. My spies say the Tarten government is angrier than ever. They are planning retribution. I wish I knew more.
There’s nothing for us here. Nothing for anyone.