Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“I’ll be back soon,” she whispered. Then she slipped into the hall. The lock clinked into place behind her.

Twelve careful steps carried Iseult to the end of the hall. The faucet dripped as she passed, then she was to the stairwell. It was perfect for hiding. Iseult dipped into the shadows, magic casting outward once more …

The man was ascending the stairs, his Threads shot through with the green concentration of someone on the hunt. He moved fluidly. One step, two step, three—all the way up until he prowled into the third-floor hall. Slower now, he approached the door on the balls of his feet. Well trained and silent in this growing storm.

If Iseult did not have her witchery, she never would have sensed him coming.

As it was, this close, his Threads burned bright as a full moon. And the longer she stared, the more she sensed a charge crackling beneath the surface. Like a river in winter, where a riptide of dark currents churned at the slow, icy heart.

Trickster, she thought again. Then a heartbeat later, Danger.

The man aimed straight for room thirteen, no hesitation, no pause—and any lingering doubts Iseult had that he was here for her were gone in an instant. He sank to a crouch before the door, then he shrugged his cloak off one shoulder.

A one-shot Firewitched pistol rested in a holster at his hip.

The man’s Threads shrank in tightly, pulled taut by single-minded intensity. And in that moment, as his arm stretched long overhead and his wrist cocked back as if to knock—at a normal height, so that anyone who opened the door would be taken by surprise—Iseult realized she had not told Owl what to do. She had not said, Do not answer if you hear a knock.

Owl would open the door. The man would attack.

Iseult moved. No stealth, only speed, she charged from the staircase into the hall. She reached the man right as startled turquoise ignited his Threads. Right as he angled toward her and grabbed for the pistol.

A front kick to his arm. The pistol flew. Then she pivoted and drove her knee into the back of his neck. He snapped forward, a shout breaking loose. His face hit the door.

But Iseult wasn’t done. Burn him, burn him, burn him. His hood had slipped back, revealing pale hair. She grabbed it, yanking his face toward her. Then she kneed him again—this time in the temple. Over and over and over, until his body went limp. His Threads hazed into unconsciousness.

For several seconds, Iseult stood there, planted above him and staring down. Her pulse boomed in her ears, her breath came in panting gasps. She needed to move. Needed to get out of the hallway before anyone saw her here. Already, curious Threads were moving toward doorways in the rooms nearby. Any moment now, someone would arrive. She was Nomatsi; he looked Cartorran. This would not go over well.

Except Iseult also couldn’t simply leave this man here. He would wake up eventually, and then he would attack again.

Burn him, burn him, burn him.

Her nose twitched. Threads approached from downstairs. No time, no time.

“Owl?” she called. “Open the door, please.”

Immediately, the door swooshed back, as if the little girl had been waiting there all along. Iseult pushed inside, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and dragged.

She had no idea how she moved him all on her own. He was not a large man, but dead weight was dead weight. Thank the goddess for the storm outside, hiding the scraping, scratching, heaving sound his body made across the floorboards.

All the while, Owl watched on, her Threads curious and, for some reason Iseult did not want to consider, thoroughly delighted.

Iseult got the man mostly inside. She dropped his shoulders, dove for his feet, and then curled his legs up. Right as she got his boots in far enough to shut the door, a person stepped into the hall.

It was the man from the faucet, his Threads now alight with horror.

“He drank too much,” Iseult said. Then she slammed the door and fell to her knees.





NINETEEN


Aeduan stared at the tier ten, unmoving. Unblinking. The room, the monks, their voices and their blood-scents—it all melted back into distant nothing. Elbows jostled, eyes glared, but Aeduan did not leave. He did not look away.

Ten thousand talers for his father’s head.

A king’s ransom indeed.

Two weeks ago, Aeduan would have taken the assignment without hesitation. He would have updated his father immediately via Voicewitch, and then he would have found a way to collect all that coin.

So, so much coin.

He would have had no qualms about faking the bounty. His father’s cause mattered more than the crude morality of the Monastery. Nor would Aeduan have cared if more monks died along the way, trying to win the coin for themselves.

Life was the price of justice, and Ragnor’s cause was a righteous one. The time to end imperial tyranny was now. Two weeks ago, Aeduan had believed that without question. No cracks in the stone, no weakness in his foundation. He was the son of Ragnor the Raider King, and his sole job was to raise coin for the cause.

Which was why he should take this tier ten. He should take it right now and then find a Voicewitch.

Instead, Aeduan turned away from the wall. The paper and its words smeared into nothing. He left the common room.

Rain beat down in the cloister, the storm having risen to full force. Clouds blocked out the sunset, darkening dusk to a false midnight. Aeduan walked along the covered edge, staring at leaves bent by raindrops.

He left the outpost, where his gaze skimmed with unseeing eyes over water splashing on the quay. Frothy with dirt, it pooled fast. He might have left the monks behind, he might be striding beside Lake Tirla while rain soaked him through, but he was not moving forward.

He was pulled in three directions. The inn was one way. His father was another, and the Monastery assignments another too, leaving Aeduan well and truly caught now. No different from the man with the lamb in the story—and also like that man, Aeduan knew he could not evade Lady Fate’s gaze forever.

She would find him; she would make him choose.

The people pulled Aeduan from his thoughts. They fled past, racing from the docks and sprinting for buildings beside the quay—and that was when he noticed the waves crashing up from the lake. Ships teetered and tottered, slamming against one another with wood-crunching force.

Rain slashed harder and harder with each passing second. The wind slashed harder too.

The animals, though, were what set Aeduan to running. Dogs, cats, and rats by the hundreds poured out of structures and flooded the street. They circled the lake, leaving the city. Had Aeduan been alone in Tirla, he would have followed. Had he been the Aeduan of two weeks ago, he would have abandoned the city and left it to the storm.

He was not that Aeduan, though. This Aeduan was caught between starvation and the slaughter. This Aeduan was not yet ready to choose.