Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Here Iseult waited, the minutes skippering past and her magic readjusting to so many people, so many Threads. The stasis that had eluded her earlier now anchored into place, comforted by rules she was accustomed to. She had grown up around people; she had lived many years in a crowded city: detachment and logic were easier when one was always on the outside looking in.

With Aeduan, there had been no Threads. There had been no outside.

Eventually, the Bloodwitch hobbled to her side. He clutched Owl’s hand in his, and though a pouty red rattled across the girl’s Threads, at least she was moving again—and Blueberry was nowhere to be seen.

Aeduan fixed Iseult with his ice-blue stare, questioning. As if he wondered why she had jogged so far away. As if he wanted to know that she was well.

She pretended not to notice. The flames were her problem and her problem alone. There was nothing he could do to help her. There was only moving forward and slogging on.

Goddess, she wished Safi were here, though.



* * *



“Think like Iseult,” Safi whispered. It had been her prayer for the last two hours while she’d sat on the edge of her bed in these beautiful white quarters—wearing the same beautiful white dress the man had bled on.

White, white, white. Everywhere Safi’s eyes landed was white, from the walls to the tiles. The first day, Safi had admired her quarters. Soothing and bright. Now, she saw it for the truly terrible shade it was. White showed blood too easily, and once that blood was dried, there was no erasing it.

The footprints she’d tracked in were still on the ground, mottled to rusty brown. An inescapable reminder of what Safi had done. What Safi had caused—because the memories branded in her brain were not enough. The detached head, with its still-blinking eyes and spurting arteries. The man’s last words: What a ridiculous question.

The thirteenth chimes clanged outside; the sun beamed down, though only a gauzy gray light filtered through the iron shutters over Safi’s lone window. A small courtyard garden bloomed out there, and at this hour, katydids clicked and clattered.

She wrapped her fingers around the Threadstone at her collarbone and rested her head on her knees. This stone had been a gift from Iseult, and it—like the matching one Iseult had—lit up when either girl was in danger.

“Think like Iseult. Think like Iseult.” Safi’s Threadsister would see some solution out of this disaster. Cool, logical Iseult would work through it like a knot in a fragile necklace, plying Safi with questions and coaxing out the facts of the situation.

The facts were that twice in her life now, Safi had carved her own path, had played her own cards—with no one to guide her—and this was where her choices had led. She had become Truthwitch for Empress Vaness in exchange for trade with the starving nation of Nubrevna. Then she had made a similar choice in Saldonica. The mark on her thumb was a reminder of that.

A day after her duel with Admiral Kahina and her resulting agreement with the woman, a thin red line had appeared right where Kahina wore her jade ring. The ring had flashed when Safi had promised to give Kahina whatever she wanted; Safi suspected that meant the deal was far more binding than mere words. Like everything else here, though, she tried not to think about it. Her choice had saved her, and it had saved Vaness and the Hell-Bards too.

Of course, the Hell-Bards were gone now. The Marstoki Sultanate had opposed having any more Cartorrans than Safi in the palace, as had the generals, admirals, nobility, and Adders. The uproar that the Hell-Bards had caused as Safi’s guards and companions—it hadn’t been safe. For them or for Safi.

Which left Safi with another fact: she was all alone in the imperial palace, surrounded by Lake Scarza waters on all sides, the Kenduran foothills beyond that, and thousands of local enemies who wanted her dead. A thousand more foreign enemies too.

She knew Rokesh and the other Adders would protect her, but while she and Vaness might have become allies in Saldonica, even friends, if it became a choice between Safi’s life and the empire’s future …

One life for the sake of many was a truth Safi understood all too well.

Perhaps the most important fact of all, though, was that the Truthwitchery Safi had hidden her entire life was now public knowledge. The one thing she never wanted to be, that she had run from for nineteen years … It had all come to pass. She was a tool for an empire, a knife for Lady Fate, and men would die because of her magic.

True, purred Safi’s power, an unwelcome warmth in her chest. She squeezed her eyelids all the tighter. She wanted to leave. She wanted to abandon this post she had chosen, and she wanted to run as fast and as far as she could go.

Safi wasn’t so foolish, though. If she tried to escape, she would end up in chains, and chains would keep her from ever leaving Marstok. Chains would keep her from ever finding Iseult—the only thing in all the Witchlands that mattered.

Iseult now traveled with a Bloodwitch. With the Bloodwitch who had hunted them across the Jadansi, and though Iseult might have claimed she trusted him, Safi did not believe her. She couldn’t. Both times the girls had spoken in Safi’s dreams, something had been wrong. Something had made Iseult’s thoughts skitter and her words fret with lies.

Safi feared Iseult did not travel with that Bloodwitch monster by choice—and she had no way to find out. Iseult hadn’t come to her dreams again in a week and a half.

Safi groaned. The knot in her chain of thoughts had led her back to the beginning: trapped in court with Iseult far, far away. She was no good at this. She needed Iseult to help her isolate the best course of action.

As she sat there, toes tapping on the tiles, a squawk tore through the room. Her gaze snapped up, and she found a crow staring at her from the garden door. An old crow, if the white around its beak meant anything.

Its head cocked sideways, eyes eerily sentient.

“I don’t have food,” Safi said, rising. “Go on, crow.” She shooed at the creature. A halfhearted gesture at best. “Leave before I call the Adders on you.”

The bird looked thoroughly unimpressed. Though it did hop backward when Safi approached, its wings fluttering.

“Go on,” she said, a bit more forcefully this time, her own hands sweeping like wings. “Get out before a poisoned dart finds you…” She trailed off as the crow kicked up and flapped onto a telescope at the heart of her small garden.

It had been a gift from the Empress, purchased in Ve?aza City during the Truce Summit. Constellations had guided Safi and Vaness on their travels though the Contested Lands, so Vaness had thought Safi might enjoy having the telescope to “view the heavens more closely.”

Safi knew Vaness had meant the gift kindly, yet it had felt more like a cruel reminder that Safi was trapped behind walls, with stars as her only escape.