Sightwitch (The Witchlands 0.5)

Laugh. Ry. It’s. Fun. Ry. Don’t. You. Think.

I hit the upstairs, a wooden loft that spanned into a larger floor of stone. More shelves, more tables, more books and papers and gadgets.

Even the brief earthquake that shivered through the workshop, ending almost as quickly as it began, seemed to move in time to Tanzi’s mocking words.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” I muttered. “It’s not at funny at all …” I trailed off, my eyes landing on another door with an eye-level keyhole.

I set off for it, a fresh surge of strength in my step.

This wasn’t funny, and I wouldn’t laugh. Instead, I would find Tanzi, I would find the Sisters, and I wouldn’t delay another moment— A storm of black kicked into my path. Feathers and must and a wild clacking of beak.

The Rook was not happy.

He pecked and squawked at me. He flew in my face, and no amount of swinging my hands or yelling at him made a difference.

He simply would not let me go.

When his beak chomped down on my nose, I finally gave up.

“What?” I howled, reeling back two steps. “What is wrong?”

I shouldn’t have spoken, because he launched himself at me. This time, I was smart enough to fling up my hands, but he simply bit my forearms instead. Hard enough to draw blood.

I had no choice but to back away. Then finally turn and simply run.

I thought he’d lost his mind. I thought he’d turned on me or been possessed by a ghost or something, and now he was going to kill me.

So I scurried back the way I’d come, back downstairs, back toward the Nubrevnan.

Upon reaching the unconscious man, the Rook abruptly stopped his attack. He landed on a table behind me, his wings stretched wide as if to block my way.

Heart drumming in my chest, I sucked in air and gawped at him. “What,” I snapped, “was that for?”

One of his wings dropped, as if …

As if he pointed to the Nubrevnan.

I glanced down. Blood had trickled out sideways around the man, following a gap in the stone tiles and framing his left side.

That couldn’t be healthy. Nor could the way his back scarcely moved when he inhaled.

“No,” I moaned. I didn’t have time for this. The Sisters needed me.

My fist moved to my heart, and seconds skated past. I could heal a man I didn’t know and potentially lose my Sisters, or I could go after them and he could potentially die.

Help the man. Help my Sisters.

Except I realized the debate was pointless. When I had lost my pack, I had lost my healer kit too.

“I’m sorry, the Rook,” I said at last. “I can’t do anything for him, and the Sisters need me. They need us.”

The Rook did not look impressed, and my ire only fanned hotter.

I puffed out my chest. “If I help him, I risk losing Tanzi. Is that what you want?”

A purring of affirmation.

“But I have no healer kit! There’s nothing I can do here!”

He wafted his wings until a breeze wisped over me—and a page flipped off the nearest table.

It landed at my feet, a torn-out sheet from some book on Threadwitches. Written in the margins were numbers with items scribbled beside them.

The numbers were bookcases and shelves, I realized. Then I put it all together: this was an inventory of sorts. A crude, disorganized one, but the system covered almost every paper that my eyes scraped over.

If there were rocks, jewels, drinks, and weapons in here, perhaps there were other things too.

In a single movement, I snatched up the page and fixed my hardest frown on the Rook. “You’re telling me there’s a healer kit somewhere in this place?”

Another purr, and this time, his wings lowered half an inch.

I gulped and glanced at the paper now clenched in my fist. I’d broken the hourglass with likely half of the quicksilver in the top. Surely no more than another half hour had passed since then.

Surely, surely I could save this man’s life and save Tanzi’s too.

It was, if nothing else, my only option. The Rook would never let me leave otherwise.

So with a prayer to Sirmaya—a frantic plea, really, that she keep my Thread-family safe—I smacked the paper on a table and set off to find a healer kit.





5(?) hours left to find Tanzi—

I wish I had more time. The workshop begged to be explored, with its three floors and running water—not Waterwitched, but with actual pumps and a spigot.

It was an absolute marvel of inventions. Some magical, some mechanical. Some theoretical and scrawled upon paper. Some assembled and ready to be used.

No dust coated the surfaces, no cobwebs clustered in the corners, and no moths had left holes behind. It meant a preservation spell rested over this space, like the ones that protected the records in the Crypts.



It also meant this place was old.

Old old. Judging by the spellings and grammar on each loose page, I would guess at least a thousand years old.

But there was no time to dawdle. No time to explore.

I found what I needed on the third floor. Not that I would have recognized it without the Rook to help.

A shrill caw as I stepped off the stairs, then he arrowed over to a rolled red leather pouch. It hung on a hook above a spigot (the fourth I’d seen thus far). A quick peek inside showed salves, creams, tinctures with familiar names, and even a handful of tinder with a strip of flint.

Another clever invention, for a small diagram sewn on an inside pocket showed how to start a fire by striking the flint against the pouch’s metal clasp.

Whoever had crafted this place, she—or they—had been a true genius.

I didn’t bother to roll up the kit before I rushed back down the spiraling flights of stairs and over to the Nubrevnan’s side.

He still lay flat on his stomach, his face crooked awkwardly to one side. Goddess, he was massive, and there would be no avoiding his blood while I flipped him over.

Yet he had to be flipped over. It took three tries and a full, groaning shout to manage it. Once on his back, though—once I was mere inches away and able to see beneath the grime that coated his skin and uniform—it hit me: I knew this young man.

He was the officer from the Nubrevnan camp. The one I’d watched bellowing orders and building a watchtower.

Perhaps it was the black oil that coated him, or perhaps it was simply the lack of a glass lens and distance to distort him, but either way, he looked different this close. For one, he was younger than I’d thought from afar. My age or near to it.

Plus, the bones that made up his gangly limbs were surprisingly slender, surprisingly soft. Elegant, even, like the marble statues stowed away in the Convent cellar.

Although marble didn’t bleed, this man most assuredly did. One of the shadow wyrms had slashed him from right shoulder to left hip, and though the clothing had sliced neatly, the skin had not. The edges were frayed and puckered, as if burned.

Or as if frozen.