“This is easily the worst prayer I have ever heard,” Iseult declared.
“Weasels piss on you, Iz. I’m not done yet.” Safi heaved a sigh through her nose and then resumed her prayer. “Please return all of our money to me before he or Habim get back from their trip. And … that is all. Thank you very much, oh sacred Noden.” Then, she hastily added, “Oh, and please ensure that Chiseled Cheater gets exactly what he deserves.”
Iseult almost snorted at that last request—except that a wave crashed into the lighthouse, sudden and rough against the stone. Water splattered Iseult’s face. She swiped it away, agitated. Warm instead of cool.
“Please, Noden,” she whispered, rubbing sea spray off her forehead. “Please just get us through this alive.”
THREE
Reaching Mathew’s coffee shop where Iseult lived proved harder than Safi had anticipated. She and Iseult were exhausted, hungry, and bruised to hell-flames, so even the basic act of walking made Safi want to groan. Or sit down. Or at least ease her aches with a hot bath and pastries.
But baths and pastries weren’t happening anytime soon. Guards swarmed everywhere in Ve?aza City, and by the time the girls had straggled into the Northern Wharf District, it was almost dawn. They’d spent half the night hiking blearily from their lighthouse to the capital and then the other half of the night slinking through alleys and clambering over kitchen gardens.
Every flash of white—every dangling piece of laundry, every torn sailcloth or tattered curtain—had punched Safi’s stomach into her mouth. But it had never been the Bloodwitch, thank the gods, and right as night began fading into dawn, the sign to Mathew’s coffee shop appeared. It poked out of a narrow road branching off the main wharf-side avenue.
REAL MARSTOKI COFFEE
BEST IN VE?AZA CITY
It was not, in fact, real Marstoki coffee—Mathew wasn’t even from the Empire of Marstok. Instead, the coffee was filtered and bland, catering to, as Habim always called it, “dull western palates.”
Mathew’s coffee was also not the best in the city. Even Mathew would admit that the dingy hole-in-the-wall in the Southern Wharf District had much better coffee. But up here on the northern edges of the capital, people didn’t wander in for coffee. They came in for business.
The sort of business Wordwitches like Mathew excelled at—the trade of rumors and secrets, the planning of heists and cons. He ran coffee shops all across the Witchlands, and any news about anything always reached Mathew first.
It was his Wordwitchery that had made Mathew the best choice for Safi’s tutor, since it allowed him to speak all tongues.
More important, though, Mathew’s Heart-Thread, Habim, had worked for Safi’s uncle her entire life—both as a man-at-arms and as a constantly displeased instructor. So when Safi had been sent south, it had only made sense for Mathew to take over where Habim had left off.
Not that Habim had completely abandoned Safi’s training. He visited his Heart-Thread often in Ve?aza City—and then proceeded to make Safi’s life miserable with extra hours of speed drills or ancient battle strategies.
Safi reached the coffee shop first and after hopping a puddle of sewage that was frighteningly orange, she began tapping out the lock-spell on the front door—a recent installment since the stolen cutlery incident. Habim could complain to Mathew all he wanted about the cost of an Aetherwitched lock-spell, but as far as Safi could see, it was worth the money. Ve?aza City had a hefty crime rate—first because it was a port, and second because wealthy Guildmasters were just so appealing to piestra-hungry lowlifes.
Of course, it was those same elected Guildmasters who also paid for an extensive, seemingly endless collection of city guards—one of whom was pausing right at the alleyway’s mouth. He faced away, scanning the moored ships of the Northern Wharf District.
“Faster,” Iseult muttered. She prodded Safi’s back. “The guard is turning … turning…”
The door flew wide, Iseult shoved, and Safi toppled into the dark shop.
“What the rut?” she hissed, rounding on Iseult. “The guards know us around here!”
“Exactly,” Iseult retorted, shutting the door and bolting the locks. “But from afar, we look like two peasants busting into a locked up coffee shop.”
Safi mumbled an unwilling, “Good point,” as Iseult stepped forward and whispered, “Alight.”
At once twenty-six bewitched wicks guttered to life, revealing bright, curly Marstoki designs on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was overdone—too many rugs of clashing patterns leapt at Safi—but, like the coffee, westerners had a certain idea about how a Marstoki shop ought to look.