Chapter 13 #2
“Painfully accurate.” Iseult wedged off the lid and dropped her own supplies inside: a Firewitched candle that could burn even in high winds, a blanket of salamander fibers, and finally, the newly acquired lanolin jars.
Once it was all inside, she returned the lid, then joined Safi several paces away. It was clear from the way Safi eyed the crates that she still didn’t know what was inside them. “What else are we missing?”
“Not much,” Iseult said. “Just the Aetherwitched troop map, which you need to get. And then a tent … wh-which I’ll get tonight when I go to the tribe.” She now leveled her whole attention onto Safi—who pointedly avoided that gaze. “In other words, Safi: you n-need to talk to Caden. Now.”
A fresh flare of annoyance on Safi’s Threads, but this time it was tinged with mustard shame and a rusted gray dread. Because Safi knew what she had to do, and understandably, she didn’t want to do it.
Iseult could hardly blame her for that. If she had to do to Aeduan what Safi was about to do to Caden …
Well, there was a reason Iseult had timed their departure for when Aeduan was away.
Safi swiped a hand across her hair, brushing snowflakes off the row of short braids she’d made along the top. “Yeah, yeah. Talk to Caden. I’ll do it, Iz.”
“Now.”
“Eventually.”
“Now.”
“I’ll start with the map first.”
“Safi, if you k-keep putting this off—”
“Yeah, yeah, Iz. I know. But I promise I’ll get it done before you go to the tribe tonight. Does that satisfy you?”
Iseult grunted. It didn’t satisfy her at all, but she knew when she’d nagged enough.
Safi heaved a sigh. It was a sound so weary, it briefly veiled all her Threads in bruise-like despair. Her spine slumped. “Why does it have to be us, Iz?”
“What do you mean?” Iseult bounced on her feet; her toes were getting numb standing here.
“Why do we have to be the Cahr Awen? Isn’t it bad enough that I’ve got to be an empress? Now I also have to heal a thrice-damned Well surrounded by raiders?” Safi opened her arms to the crates. “I mean, surely the goddess could have found better candidates than us.”
Iseult snorted, but it was a humorless sound. She didn’t like the worry twining through Safi’s Threads—and she liked even less the way the Cahr Awen souls swelled those Threads to twice their usual size.
“If you’re getting cold feet, Safi, it’s kind of l-late for that.”
“I don’t have cold feet. Well, I do literally.” Safi lifted a booted toe. “But not about our plans. We’ll leave tonight. I promise. I’m merely wondering philosophically why it has to be us? You know, it’s like asking why the sky is blue. I realize there are no easy answers.”
“The sky is blue because sunlight gets scattered by things in the atmosphere. Goddess, Safi, didn’t you listen to any of our lessons from Mathew?”
A pause. Then a huff. “Of course I listened. I meant blue as in sad. Why is the sky so sad?”
“Because you keep disappointing it w-with your lies.”
Safi laughed, her Threads brightening with pink, warm in a way the tower around them never could be. “Gods below, Iseult det Midenzi, it’ll be nice when it’s just the two of us again.”
“And by the Moon Mother, Safiya fon Hasstrel.” Iseult smiled back. “I agree.”
The girls and their horses retraced their route. Back to the main road, back to the fork, back toward the crowded lodge, where hundreds of Threads coalesced like a quilt upon the horizon.
When the bridge over the dark-watered moat to the lodge came into view, one set of crimson, furious Threads stood out: Caden fitz Grieg.
Ever since three searches of the Solfatarra had failed to turn up his Thread-family, Zander and Lev, the Hell-Bard had become a walking firepot. And he’d taken to expressing his frustration at anyone who so much as looked at him wrong … which was, more often than not, Safi.
It didn’t help either that Caden’s Firewitchery, which had been culled from him by the Hell-Bard Loom, was now returned. He and countless other Hell-Bards were suddenly brimming with powers they hadn’t felt or used in years.
He spotted Safi across the drawbridge and kicked into a canter her way. His Threads pulsed like storm clouds. “How many times are you going to do this?” he demanded once she was in earshot. “I realize you’ve no concern for your life, Your Imperial Majesty, but have some concern for mine.”
“I didn’t ask to be an empress,” Safi retorted.
“And I didn’t ask to be your guard, but here we are.”
And this, Iseult thought, is why you should have spoken to Caden sooner. She had heard this argument so many times in the past month, she could now recite it by heart. Next, Caden would say, If you leave the lodge—
“If you leave the lodge,” Caden barked, twisting his horse into step beside Safi, “you need a square of Hell-Bards around you. That is the rule.”
“And the rule is stupid. I can handle myself. Besides, I have Iseult with me.” What Safi didn’t add was what they all knew: And she can easily kill almost anyone.
“Ah yes,” Caden said, taking on a calm, thoughtful tone. “The other half of the precious, irreplaceable Cahr Awen.”
Iseult sighed. She had better things to do than waste her time and energy watching Safi and Caden rehash the same argument. Especially since Safi’s own temper was fueled by grief. She knew what she had to do—and she absolutely didn’t want to do it.
Iseult spurred Cloud into a canter. The horse’s hooves clattered into a three-beat rhythm on the road, and neither Safi nor Caden noticed her departure.
The Threads that bound them had turned fiery with mutual irritation, mutual unspoken pain.
There was little space in their Threads for anything else.
Iseult did not look back.