Sightwitch (The Witchlands 0.5)

Then Captain dropped the glass, and his hands clutched at his face. “Stop,” he snarled. “I can’t understand you—”

He broke off, whipping around. Then he shouted into the darkness, “Who are you? Show yourselves!” He spun again, louder and louder with each cry. “Stop shouting at me—who are you? Stop, stop, stop.”

He fell to his knees in a great crunch of bone that rattled through the tiles. His movement turned jerky and frantic.

I did not know what to do. My feet were stuck to the floor, and my mind had shrunk down to a useless pinprick of thought: What is happening to him?

I got my answer mere moments later when he lurched right for me.

“Kill me.” The words razored from his throat. His eyes bulged, glittering orbs in the dim circle of light. “KILL ME.”

Black lines radiated across his face and into his eyes. One black bubble built at the edge of his jaw.

I didn’t think—there was no time for it. All I could do was react. He was cleaving, his magic was burning through him, and if I didn’t do something right now, he would kill me.

I had not seen cleaving before, but I had read about it often enough to know death was the only outcome.

I flung the torch at him. It shuddered through the air, and before I saw it land, I was at the pedestal and hauling up the massive hilt. It took both my hands to grip it, but that shorn steel jutting up was still long enough to slice.

And long enough, I hoped, to kill.

I rounded back toward him. On his hands and knees, he had already crawled past the torch. It burned behind him, silhouetting him in flame.

He looked like Skull-Face from the Crypts.

I attacked. I had to—he was too large for me to fight if I didn’t get him while he was low. So I aimed for his face, and I charged.

In two leaping steps, I was to him. He tipped back his head, as if offering me his throat.

“Kill me,” he repeated. No longer a rasp, but a clear, insistent command that coursed straight to the center of my mind.

I stumbled. I slowed. I hesitated.

And in that moment, the Rook dove between us. Feathers and howling and talons to slice. The attack he had threatened in the workshop he now gave in full force.

His claws slashed my face, his power drove me back. The blade fell from my hands in a clatter of metal. I rocked back, arms flailing—but not enough to keep me from crashing to the floor.

Then everything stopped. The Rook flapped to Captain, who now lay sprawled across the tiles, and for several booming heartbeats, I sat there and did not move.

My wrists ached from breaking my fall. My face burned with lines of throbbing heat, where each of the Rook’s talons had torn skin.

Meanwhile, the torch flickered on and on, shadows to undulate over Captain. Darkness thrummed around me. I was outside the light’s reach; I could hear nothing but my own shallow breaths and slamming pulse.

“I’m sorry.” The words slid over the tiles to me. Captain rolled to his side, the movement stiff. Pained. With the torch behind him, I couldn’t see his face. “I … am so sorry, Ryber.”

The Rook nudged Captain’s leg, purring with concern.

“What are you?” I breathed, my body still as stone.

“I don’t know.” With a harsh exhale, he pushed into a sitting position.

The light behind him shrank even more, and the Rook hopped around to Captain’s leg.

Twice now, the bird had chosen this Nubrevnan man over me. Yet I was neither upset nor angry.

The Rook did nothing without reason, so the question was: What was his reason?

“You cleaved,” I said, finally drawing in my legs as if to rise.

Captain nodded slowly. It sent the light bouncing. “But then the cleaving stopped.”

“That’s not possible.” I knew it wasn’t possible. Sister Hilga and Sister Rose both had taught me that, and I’d read it in Memory Records too.

“But it did.” He mimicked me, pulling in his own legs. “A voice told me, ‘Not yet,’ and then the … the fire in my veins went away.”

Though my wrists groaned in protest, I pushed myself to my feet. “The voices you heard before the cleaving—who were they? What were they?”

“I don’t know.” He wagged his head, and as he continued to speak, I approached him, one measured step at a time.

I kept my hand on my knife the whole way.

“They used words I didn’t understand, Ryber, and they screamed and screamed and screamed. They were hurting. Someone had … had betrayed them. That much I knew—that much I could feel. Except that it also felt like me. Like the voices were my memories and I had been betrayed.”

I reached Captain’s side, and as one, he and the Rook lifted their gazes to me.

The Rook bristled, a challenge glittering in his eyes.

Captain, however, looked so deeply ashamed, so deeply sorry, I thought he might ask me again to kill him.

We held each other’s gaze, his chest unmoving. Mine bowing in and out. Three breaths I took. Then he said, “I don’t like this place, Ryber. I want to leave. After we find your Sisters, please: I want to leave.”

It took me a moment to gather my words. The truth was that I didn’t know how to leave. I didn’t know what would happen once I found Tanzi and the others. For all I knew, I would join them.

And at my core, that was certainly what I hoped for.

So I answered simply, “We’re almost there, Captain.” Then I extended my hand to him.

He tensed at the movement. Then he seemed to realize what it meant—that I was not only allowing him physical contact, but I was offering it.

The edge of his lip twitched upward, but he didn’t take my hand in his. Instead he lumbered to a stand on his own—which I appreciated. After retrieving the torch, I found him hunched, a pillar of shame with the Rook resting on his shoulder.

“If it happens again,” he said. “If I cleave again, please stab me with your knife, Ryber. I don’t ever want to frighten you, and I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

“Hye,” I said, though I stared at the Rook as I said it.

For we both knew he would never let me kill Captain. There was something special about this Nubrevnan man, and I had my suspicions of what that might be.





Y2787 D271


MEMORIES

For once, all of the Six were present at today’s meeting in my workshop. Not that the Rook King contributed much. ’Tis strange how he sits at our table and speaks when spoken to, yet he never feels as if he is part of the group.

This whole enterprise was his idea, so of course he is part of it. Of course, he is one of us.

Yet this feeling nags. Plus, I’m often left wondering when I will meet his general. If this man is so important to our plans, then why does he never come?

Like before, Lady Baile tarried after the meeting, waiting until all the others had left. I knew what she would ask before her lips could even part, and I flushed to my toes at the prospect of it.

So before she could utter a word, I blurted, “How did you know Bastien was your Heart-Thread?”