A branch cracked.
Aeduan lurched to his feet. His vision spun, yet he smelled no one.
“Don’t move,” said a voice in Nomatsi. Directly behind him.
The Threadwitch. Of course it would be her, yet Aeduan couldn’t decide if Lady Fate was favoring him or cursing him.
He chose the latter when the Threadwitch said, “I removed your knives. They’re hidden.”
In his mindless drive for the coins, he’d entirely forgotten the blades. Fool.
He twisted toward her, calling in Dalmotti, “I do not need my knives to kill you, Threadwitch.” Rain began to pelt his neck, his scalp.
The girl expelled a harsh breath before circling into the clearing. She wore Aeduan’s cloak, turned inside out. Smart, even if it was against Monastery rules. One step became ten, until she paused at what would have been a safe distance against anyone but a Bloodwitch. Aeduan could tackle her before she blinked.
Instead, he let his arms hang limp at his sides. He could attack, but information was better earned through conversation. At least so Monk Evrane always said.
Then again, Monk Evrane had also said this girl was half the Cahr Awen, that mythical pair their Monastery was sworn to protect. Aeduan found it unlikely, though—not merely that this girl could be half of that pair, but that the Cahr Awen even existed.
“Where are the rest of my coins, Threadwitch?”
No answer, and for three heartbeats they simply eyed each other through the rain. Droplets streaked down her face, leaving trails of white amid the dirt. She looked thinner than two weeks before. Her cheekbones poked through transparent skin, her eyes sagged.
“Where are the rest of my coins?” Aeduan repeated. “And how did you get them?”
Her nose wiggled. A sign, Aeduan guessed, that she was thinking.
The rain fell heavier now, pooling atop the mud. Rolling down the Monastery cloak that Aeduan wanted back. His own filthy wool coat was sodden through.
As if following his thoughts, the girl said in Nomatsi, “I’ve found us shelter.”
“Us?” Aeduan asked, still in Dalmotti. “What do you think this is, Threadwitch?”
“An … alliance.”
He laughed. A raw sound that rumbled from his stomach and clashed with the distant thunder overhead. He and the Threadwitch were, if anything, enemies. After all, he had been hired to deliver her to Corlant.
Aeduan was intrigued, though. It wasn’t often people surprised him, and it was even less often that people challenged him. The Threadwitch did more than that.
She perplexed him. He had no idea what she might say next. What she might do next.
Aeduan sniffed the air once. No blood-scents hit his witchery, yet something did prickle his nose …
The damp smoke. Run, my child, run.
“Dinner,” the Threadwitch explained, stalking past Aeduan. She moved as if nothing had happened between them. As if the rain wasn’t falling and she hadn’t stolen his Carawen blades.
And as if turning her back on a Bloodwitch wasn’t a fool’s move.
Aeduan took his time walking. A few test steps with his newly healed leg. A stiff scooping motion to retrieve the abandoned coins. Then, when no traps sprang up to hold him and no pain burst forth, Aeduan shifted into a jog, following the Threadwitch wherever she might lead.
*
Safi’s boots were far too large. They rubbed sores onto her heels—yet that was nothing compared to the raw skin at her wrists, where the Hell-Bard rope scraped and dug. Meanwhile, the rope at her ankles had sunk into the loose tops of her new boots and sloughed off the skin.
Each step burned.
Safi reveled in the pain. A distraction from the fire that gathered in her gut.
Hell-Bard Commander Fitz Grieg.
Caden.
The Chiseled Cheater.
There was that scar on his chin—it peeked out from his helmet. She remembered it from Ve?aza City. Just as she remembered the confidence in his smile, and the manner he had of regarding a person dead on, no blinking. No looking away.
All those lifetimes ago in Ve?aza City, Safi had thought that smile and the intensity of his stare were … interesting. Appealing, even.
Now, she wanted nothing more than to rip them off his face.
Safi’s boot snagged on a root. She tumbled forward. Rope fibers sliced into already bloodied flesh, and against her pride’s greatest desire, she sucked in sharply.
“Stop, Heretic.” The commander released her ropes before moving in front of her and helping her to rise. Then, from a satchel on his belt, he withdrew two strips of beige linen like the sort used for binding wounds.
“Give me your hands.”
Safi complied, and to her shock, he wound the cloths around her wrists, blocking the harsh ropes from her open flesh. “I should have done this at the start,” he said. His tone was neither apologetic nor accusatory. Merely observational.