Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Grab the gemstones to make it stop!

He grabbed them—and other items too. Anything that looked like a rock, anything small or round or within grabbing distance, he stuffed into his pockets. He could scarcely see. He certainly couldn’t think, and every nerve inside him was aflame.

Good boy, she crooned once his pockets were full. Now walk.

Merik walked.





SIXTEEN


The walk through Tirla was a tedious hike. Though Iseult’s salves and tinctures had eased some of Aeduan’s pain, they were slow to act—and most would need several days of application to have any effect. At least, that was what Aeduan assumed according to how normal people healed.

How strange. He never thought he would be lumped with normal people. When he was young, it had been all he’d wanted. Now, he hated it.

Winds hastened around him, driving him faster. Clouds scudded in. A storm would break before he could complete this errand if he didn’t hurry.

When at last the lake’s front came into view, waves choppy, Aeduan steeled his spine. Inhaled, exhaled. Not my mind, not my body. Then he rounded onto the main quay, crowded even at sunset, and approached the outpost with as sure-footed a stride as he could manage.

The tall building wedged between a public stable and a mapmaker’s shop had changed little in the last two years. It bore the same weather-stained limestone front, the same rook-and-tree sigil over the entrance, smoothed away to a featureless oval form, and the same heavy oaken door with no latch on the outside.

He knocked once. An eye-level slat hissed wide. Dark eyes peered through, flicking first to Aeduan’s face, then to the opal in Aeduan’s left ear.

“Good enough,” came a muffled voice from the other side, and in a squeal of hinges—also unchanged—the door swung open to reveal the monk on the other side. Unfamiliar but typically wizened. Outpost guard assignments were comfortable, well paid, and perfect for mercenary monks well past their prime.

“You look like shit,” the man said.

“I feel like shit,” Aeduan replied, earning a bark of laughter as he limped into the cloister beyond. Acolytes, their white cowls turned to gray beneath the gathering storm, tended neat rows of cabbage, beets, and carrots. Lucky bastards. Aeduan had applied six times for a remote training position. Anything to get away from the Monastery.

He had never been approved, and in hindsight, he supposed it was to be expected. No one trusted a Bloodwitch. No one trusted a demon.

Aiming right, he circled the garden until he reached the requisitions shop. The beet and carrot leaves thrashed on the wind. Thunder hummed in the distance.

“You,” came a surprised voice as Aeduan stepped inside the store—also unchanged, with its low counter at the back and a wall filled with cubbyholes. The Marstoki woman on the other side who ran this outpost, however, had changed: a few more gray hairs around the crown, a few more wrinkles around the eyes.

“It has been a while, Monk,” she said. “And you looked much better back then.”

“Two years.” Aeduan approached the counter. Pain dogged each step, but he could not show it. This woman might have been one of the only monks to ever tolerate him, yet he had no illusions she liked him. He had brought in a great deal of coin for her outpost; monsters were useful like that.

“I was in Dalmotti,” he explained. “On a tier seven. Only just returned.”

“A tier seven. That would explain all the blood, then.” At Aeduan’s confused expression, her thick eyebrows notched up. “Or do you mean it was an old tier seven?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Incredulity sent her brows even higher. “Have you not heard of the new Abbot’s changes? Assignments are rated by coin now, not length of contract.”

New Abbot. This was the first Aeduan had heard of that.

A startled laugh split the woman’s lips. Aeduan must be doing a poor job of controlling his expressions.

“When was the last time you visited an outpost, Monk?” She leaned onto the counter. “The Elders chose Natan fon Leid as the old man’s replacement over a month ago.”

Aeduan’s head tipped sideways as he chewed on these words. He had not visited an outpost in over two months. The monks in Ve?aza City had not been as welcoming as this woman here.

Logical, then, that he had heard nothing of a new Abbot or rating system—and part of him wished he had not learned it now. Natan fon Leid had always been egocentric, even for a Cartorran, and his lust for power had been insatiable growing up. Qualities perfectly suited to the role of Carawen Abbot, but not qualities Aeduan particularly appreciated.

Another laugh from the woman, and she straightened. “Not an admirer, I see?”

“Hmm,” he offered in reply, annoyed his face seemed beyond control. It was taking all his effort to simply remain standing. Managing expressions too … He had no idea how the Threadwitch did it.

“Do you have Painstones?” he asked.

“A few.” The woman craned toward a cubby on her left. “The Marstoks are diverting all supply to the border skirmishes, though, so I’ve had to raise the price on them … Wait.” She froze mid-reach, gaze leaping back to Aeduan. “Why do you need a Painstone?”

“It is not for me,” he lied.

She did not look as if she believed him, but she also did not press further. Several breaths later, a small satchel dropped onto the counter. “That’s a tier four by the new rules. Expensive,” she clarified. “Are you sure you want it?”

All supplies in the Monastery had to be paid for through service, but Aeduan did not care if the cost of this stone was a tier four or a tier ten. He needed something to keep him strong until he could meet with a healer witch, and he would take whatever he could get.

“Yes,” he was all he said in reply, snatching it off the counter and depositing it in a pocket. Now he just had to finish this errand. Then he could slip off somewhere and don it. “I also need a new uniform for myself. Black.”

Black, he had decided, would cover these recurring bloodstains.

“Do you want a new cloak too?” She eyed the shredded, filthy fabric. “I have plenty. The cost is only a tier one.”

Aeduan shook his head. His cloak possessed modifications he could not purchase here: salamander fibers against flame, a fire flap against smoke. Even pocked with holes and streaked with blood as it was, he would rather wear this old cloak than any piece of cloth that might be new.

After confirming his size had not changed—and agreeing that a tier one assignment seemed fair payment, even if Aeduan was not sure what that meant anymore—he moved to the next item on the list.

“I need travel clothes for a girl. About six or seven years old. Small for her age.”