THIRTEEN
Iseult and Aeduan ate in silence. His jaw worked methodically. He hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the bear trap.
Iseult hadn’t expected him to. Never had she longed for Threads more, though. The world was so empty, so colorless without humans nearby, and weeks had passed with only distant plaits to brush against her. Now, when she was finally faced with a human again, he was colorless. Threadless. Blank.
Body language, expressions—these were puzzles Iseult had never had to decipher. Yet without Threads hovering over the Bloodwitch, she had to scrutinize every movement of his face. Every ripple of his muscles.
Not that he made many. Cool as a Threadwitch, her mother would say. Gretchya would mean it as a compliment, for of course Threadwitches were not meant to show emotion. It would sting like an insult for Iseult, though, since the phrase was never directed at her. Gretchya only ever used it for other people—the ones who were better at stasis, better at calm than Iseult could ever be.
The longer Iseult observed Aeduan, the more she sensed an emotion emanating off him. Distrust.
It was in the way he sat stiff and at the ready while he ate. In the way his eyes never left Iseult, tracking her as she moved about the small campsite. He saved my life, Iseult thought as he ate, and he hates me for it.
Iseult was accustomed to distrust, though, and to hate. And if those feelings could kill, then they would have slain her a long time ago.
“More?” She motioned to the campfire, to the final grayling staked to her spit.
The Bloodwitch cleared his throat. “Where are my blades, Threadwitch?” He stubbornly still spoke in Dalmotti.
So Iseult stubbornly answered in Nomatsi: “Hidden.”
“And the rest of my talers?”
“Far away.”
The Bloodwitch’s fingers curled. He pushed to his feet. “I can force the answer from your throat if I wish.”
He couldn’t, and they both knew it. He’d lost all power over her by admitting in Ve?aza City that he couldn’t smell or control her blood.
Yet as Iseult matched his pose with her own chin high and her own shoulders back, she still found her heart running too fast. Thus far everything in her plan had gone as she’d estimated—as she’d hoped. But now … Now was the final knot in her snare.
“I will return your coins to you,” she declared, grateful her stammer felt leagues away, “only if you will hunt someone for me.”
His entire body tightened like a snake’s. For several breaths, nothing happened. Distant thunder rolled. Wind gusted into the overhang, spraying them. Yet Aeduan moved not a muscle.
Until at last, he murmured, “So you … need me.”
“Yes. To track Safiya fon Hasstrel.”
“The Truthwitch.”
Iseult winced at that word. The barest of flinches, yet she knew Aeduan saw. She knew he noted.
“The Truthwitch,” she agreed eventually, marveling at how strange it was to utter that word aloud. The one word she hadn’t dared say for six and a half years, lest someone overhear. Lest she accidentally curse Safi to imprisonment or death. “The Marstoks took Safi, but I don’t know where. You, Bloodwitch, can track her.”
“Why would I do that for you?”
“Because I will tell you where the rest of your coins are.”
He eased two steps closer, circling around the dead fire. No blinking. No looking away. “You will pay me with my own silver talers?”
So the coins are his. Iseult didn’t know how or why they had ended up in Mathew’s cellar, but she would use that bargaining card all the same.
At her nod, Aeduan laughed. A sound that hummed with shock and disbelief. “What will prevent you from keeping my money? Once I find the Truthwitch for you, how do I know you will fulfill your end of the deal?”
“How do I know,” Iseult countered, “that once you find Safiya fon Hasstrel, you won’t try to keep her? Try to sell her off, like you did before?”
The Bloodwitch hesitated, as if quickly tracing several options of conversation before choosing the one he liked most. Or the one that best served his purpose.
Cool as a Threadwitch.
“So it will come down to timing, then.” He rolled his wrists. “Who betrays whom first.”
“Does that mean you accept?”
He took another step toward her, this one long enough to close the gap between them. Iseult had to lift her chin to keep eye contact.
“You are not my master, Threadwitch. You are not my employer. And above all, you are not my ally. We travel the same route for a time, nothing more. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“In that case,” he continued, still in Dalmotti, always in Dalmotti, “I accept.”
Iseult’s fingers furled, fists to keep herself from reacting. From revealing how much relief ebbed through her.
I’m coming, Safi.