Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Except for Aeduan. He still had her beat.

“Ten thousand talers.” She counted off a single finger. Then a second and a third finger as she added, “Plus twenty thousand piestras and twenty-five thousand cleques. That’s enough money to buy a kingdom, and it’s an open assignment, too.”

Open assignments meant anyone could try to complete them, and they remained open until they were done. There had never been one in all of Aeduan’s years of mercenary work. Nor had he ever heard of one with such a high price attached.

It did not change his mind, though.

“I have no interest.”

“Good. Because I intend to do it.”

“I do not care.”

“You should.” She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “So beware, Bloodwitch, because if you cross my path again, I will destroy you.” With a parting smirk she spun around—cloak spraying Aeduan with rain—and stalked from the common room.

Aeduan did not watch her go. Like everything else around here, she had not changed at all in two years. Never mind that he had not crossed her path on purpose, that he had no interest in the tier ten, and never mind that she could not destroy him even if she wanted to. Lizl hated him; she had always hated him; she always would.

In a flurry of speed, Aeduan grabbed the first assignments he saw on the tier two and tier four walls. Then he left the common room and its huddled monks to finish what he had come here to do: he went to the Shrine of the Fallen.

Underground, as all Carawen shrines were, rain dripped down the steps leading from the cloister. A puddle splashed at the bottom. Thunder chased behind. Aeduan followed a tunnel deeper into the earth, until at last he reached the stone room, a miniature version of the massive underground catacombs at the Monastery. Low, vaulted ceilings flickered with candlelight, while the black marble hexagon at the heart of the room absorbed all light.

As wide as Aeduan was tall, the marble slab reached his mid-thigh. Four monks knelt around it, each reciting their vows at their own speed. Aeduan had no plans to join them. He had not known the man who had died. He wanted this errand complete.

A fifth monk stepped from the shadows. It was required that all monks serve at a Shrine of the Fallen for a year, and most waited until old age before fulfilling the duty. This monk, though, was young. Perhaps no more than a decade past Aeduan.

“Are you here to pay your respects?” she asked. “Or report?”

“Report.” He withdrew the dead man’s opal from his pocket. “I do not know the monk’s name. I found him a day south of Tirla. An artisanal monk, caught in a battle.”

The woman sighed, a sound laden with regret, and plucked the opal from Aeduan’s palm. “It is the tier ten.” She frowned at the gem. “It is taking our lives one by one. A hundred of us have fallen trying to finish it.” Her gaze cut back to Aeduan’s. Piercing. Desperate, even. “No fortune is worth one’s life, Monk. Remember that.”

Then she bowed her head respectfully and melted once more into the shadows.



* * *



Aeduan returned to the common room. Curiosity propelled him. Curiosity and something harder—something almost like certainty, though he could not say how he knew.

It roiled in his gut. It made his strides slice long against the rain.

He had to shove through the monks clustered before the wall. Some snarled, some glared, just like the old days—and just like the old days, they all withdrew when they saw the blood swirling across Aeduan’s eyes.

Bloodwitch, they whispered. A demon from the Void.

Then Aeduan reached the lone paper staked to the planks. Such a simple beige sheet for such important words, and nailed above it were two more papers listing payments, as if the bounty had been increased not once but twice since first arriving.





SEVENTEEN


The early-evening sun bore down while Safi trailed the Empress of Marstok and Habim beside Lake Scarza. Naval ships groaned against their tethers and white sails floated for as far as the eye could see. Thousands of boats, yet still only a fraction of the full Marstoki forces. Most, Safi had learned, were moored on the southern coast or already at sea.

After Vivia Nihar’s departure, Safi and Vaness had traveled with Habim to the northernmost tip of the lake, where the navy kept their main headquarters. Safi had changed into an Adder uniform: black tunic, loose black pants, and supple black ankle boots. The only difference between Safi’s uniform and the other Adders’ was that the iron belt at her waist carried no weapons, and she did not have to wear the headscarf. Yet.

Rokesh and eleven other Adders moved around the group, spaced wide enough apart to allow Vaness to move unimpeded along the wide sandstone bulwark that overlooked the main docks.

“The Cartorrans want your Truthwitch,” Habim said matter-of-factly. Hands clasped behind his back, he examined sailors no differently than he had examined Safi and Iseult growing up. “Emperor Henrick grows bolder each day, Your Majesty. He taunts us, trying to see how close he can get before we attack.”

“And when they do get too close,” Vaness responded, no change in her iron stride, “then we will kill them.”

True, true, true.

“No,” Habim countered, “we will not.” He slowed to a stop, forcing Safi and the Adders to slow as well. “If we escalate the conflict, it will only give Cartorra—and Dalmotti—a reason to escalate as well. We are not ready for that, Your Majesty. We may be large, well organized, and well supplied, but that does not mean we will win.

“The bulk of your troops are Children of the Truce. They have no grasp of what war looks like, no understanding of what’s at stake, and little reason to care.”

Safi’s chest frizzed with the truth in that assertion—and it brought to mind a similar statement made on a similar evening only a month before. You have no idea what war is like, Uncle Eron had said.

And he had been right. Safi saw that now. She too was also a Child of the Truce.

As if on cue, an officer marched by on a lower parapet. He barked orders to a flag-bearer toting the standard. A young flag-bearer, not old enough to yet have whiskers. Not old enough to have even grown into his feet.

Safi winced at the sight of him; Habim simply sniffed; Vaness showed no reaction at all.

Moments later, they resumed walking, so Safi resumed following. They now discussed ground forces and supply chains, river routes and highway checkpoints. All subjects Safi had been forced to study—under Habim’s tutelage, no less—but for which Iseult had always been the better student.