Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“On the Nomatsi calendar, it is the twenty-seventh day beneath the Eight Moon. On the first peoples’ calendar—the ones who lived here a thousand years ago—we are on the twenty-seventh day of Storms.” Esme peeked back at Merik, a sly smile on her lips. “But I imagine, simple as you are, Prince, that you wish to know the day on the ‘common’ calendar.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a word implies ease and choice, doesn’t it? But in truth the common calendar was forced upon us with whips and chains.”

Throughout this long speech, Merik said nothing. Showed nothing on his face beyond the truth of pain in his ribs and spine. Even his unfocused gaze he kept pointed toward Esme, so that she would not sense how he took note of every space in the tower, every possible weapon or potential tool. She had referred to Threads, so she must be some kind of Threadwitch—which would also explain the assortment of stones piled on a low table beneath the main window.

She had also mentioned awakening the Fury inside Kullen. That was a question Merik would have to poke at later, though.

“On the common calendar,” Esme finished, “we are on the two hundred and forty-third day in the nineteenth year since the signing of the Twenty Year Truce.”

So Merik had lost only a few hours, then. Kullen must have flown his unconscious body directly here after destroying that stone, which meant he had not attempted to hunt down Ryber or Cam. One small boon amidst this maddening storm.

After draining the final sips of water, Merik cleared his throat. “They … will have to start again.”

At Esme’s puzzled look, Merik wondered if perhaps he had chosen the wrong words or conjugated improperly. But then the young woman’s expression cleared, and her delighted, spine-twisting laugh skipped out once more. She even plunked down her mortar and pestle to clap her hands.

“You mean the calendar! They will have to start it again—yes, yes, they will, for the Truce has ended. Oh, how fun. You actually have a brain, Prince. I would never have guessed it to look at you, but you are not like my other Cleaved, are you?” Another clap, and this time she hopped to her feet to prance toward a stack of books at the opposite wall.

My other Cleaved. With that phrase, a thousand questions clamored to life in Merik’s brain. Who this woman was, why she possessed Cleaved—or for that matter, how she possessed Cleaved … And why she’d spoken of Merik as if he were one of them.

More troubling, though, was the fact that Merik felt no alarm. No panic like before. Only a gathering warmth behind his lungs and a slow dissipation of the pain.

“It makes sense, I suppose,” she went on, snagging a worn tome off the pile. “You are not directly bound to my Loom, and I did not cleave you intentionally like the rest of my servants. Nor did I fully cleave your Threadbrother. I tried to.” She flipped open the book, her sigh brushing atop flapping pages. “But he is made of so many people and so many ancient Threads, it was not as simple as I had thought it would be. Ah, but now that you are here, Prince…”

She spun toward Merik, eyes wide and finger tapping at some page he could not see. Though he thought he should be able to. She was not so far away. He blinked. The room blurred.

“Now that you are here, Prince, I shall fill in all the gaps that this diary failed to explain. Magic is not what it was when Eridysi first ran her experiments. Your collar, my Loom—I have had to modify and adjust everything. But now that you are here … Ah, there is so much for us to explore. I wish I had not added the sleeping draught to your water! For then we could have started right away.”

Ah, Merik thought as cozy sleep charged in, pulling him to the ground in a clank of wood and chains. She drugged me. How nice.





ELEVEN


Never had Vivia seen a city so large.

Though tens of leagues away, Azmir consumed the horizon like wildfire across the plains. City of the Golden Spires, City of Eternal Flame. This city—and the enormous, expanding canyon around it—had as many absurd titles as its empress. And all of them, she had to admit, were deserved. From the striped canyon walls that ascended into the Kendura Hills to the whitecapped Sirmayans beyond, from the crowded wharves that clustered halfway across Lake Scarza to the Floating Palace on its red-earthed island at the center, Vivia had never seen or imagined any place like this.

As the six Windwitches carried Vivia ever closer to the imperial capital, the hard angles of its towers came into bright focus under the sun. It was ten times the size of Lovats—twenty times, even, and with a hundred smaller villages to dot the surrounding hills. Yet it was not the scale that stunned Vivia. Fresh, clean, standing, Azmir looked as if it had been built only a year before, even though she knew it to be centuries old.

As the Floating Palace rushed in closer, a white wonder of towers broken up by bursts of green, Vivia’s stomach snagged. She tried to blame her spinning vision and wobbling knees on the descent, but once she landed, she still felt like hurling. Like charging for the nearest cypress trees and hiding far from sight.

For there was nothing, nothing that this lush, vibrant empire could possibly want from Vivia or Nubrevna. When it came to trade or treaties, Marstok had all of the advantages and none of the shames.

No regrets. Keep moving. She was here; she had power; she would not waste this trip.

Vivia smoothed at her silver coat before yanking off her goggles and attempting to tame her hair. It did not comply.

Meanwhile, sixteen women and men in green uniforms now marched toward her. None carried more than a single sword at their hips, and most carried no weapon at all. Which meant these guards were purely ceremonial—no show of threat, nor even a show of power. This was a polite welcoming party, and the Empress did not wish to scare Vivia away.

It wasn’t working.

“Your Highness,” said a woman at the fore, and in absolute coordination, the soldiers bowed low. “Her Imperial Majesty awaits you in her personal quarters.”

Personal quarters, Vivia thought as she beckoned for her own people to follow. The Empress was truly going out of her way to keep Vivia at ease.

And Vivia truly did not like it. She felt like the crab lured into the kitchen pot. The waters might start out cool and blissful, but outside the copper, flames were cranking higher.

Vivia’s sense of unease only increased as she followed the soldiers through a garden brimming with rhododendron (that should have stopped blooming months ago), between two marble columns delicately carved to look like tree trunks, and finally into the actual palace.

They encountered none of the imperial bodyguards known as Adders in the stark, marble halls, nor any more soldiers than the ones leading Vivia. Only servants passed by, and they were quick to duck aside and bow.

Perhaps most unsettling of all were the frequent clay basins filled with water. Twelve of them, actually, at every turn in the hall or every intersection. There were no lilies or fish within the basins, and the clay did not match the iron decor everywhere else—the iron planters for the lemon trees, the iron sconces for Firewitched flame, the iron wind chimes with no wind to ever hit them.