Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Rock scraped Aeduan’s chest as he slid outside. Gooseflesh prickled down his exposed skin. The air here was much colder, even with sunlight to warm the midmorning fog. He shivered and forced his feet to move away from the cave and to the edge of evergreens. Once there, where undergrowth and moss clotted thick, he dumped the bowl of worms. Three days since Owl had started speaking again, and already she’d become a wealth of trouble.

Aeduan placed the empty bowl atop a stone for later retrieval, yet as he stood there crouched over, an ache stung at his chest—like a dagger between the ribs. Without warning, he coughed. And coughed. And coughed. The onslaught would not subside, until eventually, a soft hand came to his back. Cautious. Concerned. Startling enough to give him pause. Then the Threadwitch’s inscrutable face swung down to peer into his. “Are you all right?”

Aeduan did not try to straighten. Shadows crossed his vision. Frustration throbbed in his chest. What was this weakness? What was this ailment? His magic should have healed him by now. “What … happened?” he asked from a throat made of acid.

“I was going to ask you the same.” She helped him rise. Her hands were warm against his skin. “Do you not remember returning?”

“No,” he admitted. Iseult was near enough for him to spot streaks of green in her eyes. To spot how cold had colored her nose to pink. It reminded him of his dream with gentle flames and serenity on her face. She had uttered his name, her eyes never opening, and her fingers had gripped at his hips and stolen his breath.

She stole his breath now, and he had no breath to spare.

He jerked away from her. The conifers dipped and bled. “Where is my shirt?”

A flush swept up her cheeks. She motioned vaguely up the hill. “It’s drying. I-I … washed it.”

“Oh.” He forced himself to straighten fully. It made everything hurt. “I will get it then.” He shifted as if to stride away, but either the movement was too quick, or his body was truly too weak, for the black rushed in once more. With it came coughing. Then the Threadwitch’s fingers were upon him once more, and when she guided him toward a low campfire and helped him to sit, he did not protest.

He could not protest.

A pot sat beside the dying fire, a damp cloth dangling from one side. Iseult scooped water into a cup. “Drink.”

He complied, and though the warm liquid felt like broken glass against his throat, he welcomed the pain. It sent the black scampering away. The coughing too.

“If you had let me come with you,” Iseult said while he drank, “then I could have helped you navigate the path.” It was an argument they’d had three times before: should Iseult join him or should she stay with Owl? If she came, then she could read the Nomatsi road and help Aeduan reach the slaughter sites uninjured. If she remained, she could prevent Owl and Blueberry from generating inevitable trouble.

“The traps were mostly triggered when I arrived,” he said. A lie. Although there had been several corpses, dressed in what he now realized was Purist gray, the bulk of the road had been navigated without triggering any protections.

Aeduan could only assume that the men who attacked knew what they were doing. The Nomatsi tribe had been killed without warning, just as the previous two had been.

He finished the water before saying: “It was the largest tribe yet. All dead.”

“Oh.” A mere sigh of sound, of resignation, even as Iseult’s face stayed impassive. “But if the traps were triggered, how did you get hit with so many arrows?”

“I found someone still alive. A monk. But he was not trained to fight. I … had to deal with him.”

Iseult’s eyes widened. A fraction of a movement, yet enough for Aeduan to catch. Enough for him to add, “I did not kill him,” even if he did not know why he wanted to clarify. “He was wounded when I found him, and after he died, I stayed to bury him. That was when I triggered the traps.”

Another soft sigh. Then she sank into a cross-legged position beside him. “Did he see who attacked them?”

Aeduan nodded, though instantly wished he hadn’t. The world spun. “The monk,” he forced out, eyes wincing shut, “said it was the Purists.”

“Not raiders then?”

“I do not know.” Again, a lie, but he saw no reason to tell Iseult that he knew of Purists working with the Raider King. That he knew of one Purist in particular, working with his father.

“Corlant,” she said, filling in one of the gaps on her own. “He was there, wasn’t he?” Without waiting for a reply, she tugged something from her coat pockets, then opened her hands for Aeduan to see.

Two arrowheads shone black against her pale palms. Both bits of iron were bloodstained, but only one gave off any blood-scent—Aeduan’s own.

“This one injured me in Dalmotti.” She furled her left fingers into a fist. “And this one I pulled from you at dawn. I think they’re cursed. No,” she amended, head shaking, “I know they are. Owl called it ‘bad earth.’”

Bad earth. He glanced down at his chest, at the six old scars that marked his flesh and the four new puckers on his belly—puckers that should not be there at all, just as the seventeen holes in his back should not be there either. He’d had more than enough time to heal.

“Corlant,” Iseult continued, “can do that. He…” She tapped at her right biceps. “He almost killed me with a cursed arrow in Dalmotti.” There was a strain to her voice now, like a fiddle pulled too tight. “I was unconscious for a long time. I-I almost died.”

“That cannot happen to me. I am a Bloodwitch.”

She shrugged as if to say How can you be so sure? Aloud, though, she said: “Why was he with this tribe? The Midenzis are on the other side of the Jadansi. Unless…” She trailed off, a tiny frown wrinkling her brow.

Aeduan offered no reply. Lying did not come naturally to him, and he had already pushed his limits. Silence seemed his best option now.

For a long moment, Iseult gazed at him, unblinking. As inscrutable as all Threadwitches were trained to be. Behind her, the fire popped, and a final burst of flame guttered upward. Smoke gathered. A soft breeze pitched across Aeduan’s bare skin.

He wanted his shirt back.

“We need a proper healer,” Iseult said at last, giving a pointed glance to Aeduan’s stomach. “We need better healing supplies, too, and we’re out of lanolin for our blades.”

We, Aeduan thought, and before he could argue—before he could ask Why we? or even Why did you wait the whole night instead of leaving?—Iseult was on her feet and circling behind him. Trails from the movement streaked across his vision. Smoke and flesh and flame.

“You’re bleeding again,” she murmured. Then her fingers were on him once more, warm and sure while she pressed the damp cloth to his back. He hadn’t even seen her pick it up.

“No.” He reached around to take the cloth from her hand. “I can do it,” he tried to say, but the twisting in his ribs, the stretching of the wounds down his back, set his lungs to spasming once more.

This time, the coughing would not abate. Even after two cups of water, he could not suck in enough air. So when Iseult tried a second time to dab away the blood that never stopped falling, he did not protest.

Nor did he protest when she said, “We should go to Tirla, Aeduan. I know it is a Marstoki stronghold, but we can find a healer in a city that size. And we can get fresh supplies too.”