Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Snow fell, thick and white. Iseult’s boots left tracks as she trudged through the forest toward the Nomatsi encampment a mile away.
Caden’s too, five paces behind her. His Threads were alight with nerves, and she could hardly blame the man.
Navigating a deadly trail toward a tribe of people who might decide to kill him instead of letting him join?
Oh, yes. She’d be nervous too.
Actually, Iseult was nervous. She had only visited the tribe three times in the last four weeks.
Not merely because the Solfatarra breathed poison nearby and she had to follow this Nomatsi trail through it—a trail that was constantly changing—but because for all her newfound understanding of her mother, things were not suddenly easy.
Plus, there was Alma, and what was Iseult supposed to say to a girl who’d died by her hand and then come back to life by her hand too?
“Shit,” Caden yelped behind her. “Is that a bear trap?”
“It is.” Iseult wanted to laugh. Instead, she kept her face flat. “And there are more lurking in the shadows. Stay close, Hell-Bard.”
“Right.” He tugged his wool cloak to him. Then shifted so his heavy pack rested differently. Then seemed to realize Iseult was already striding onward without him, so he scooted after, plowing up fresh snow.
The encampment was quiet by the time they reached it. The sun was setting; most of the Nomatsis were in their tents, preparing end-day meals. Smoke coiled toward a snow-clouded sky. Horses snuffed and pawed, layered beneath blankets. Goats bleated.
Iseult had timed this arrival well. It had been challenging enough to convince Alma and Gretchya to accept Caden as a guard; she was absolutely not up to the task of convincing the entire tribe.
She found Gretchya’s tent, the largest at the center of the encampment. A fresh pot of borgsha simmered, oozing out spicy, fatty scents that slithered over Iseult as she shoved inside. Lanterns flickered near Gretchya at the clay pot of stew; Alma worked at a traveling desk covered in gemstones.
Both women looked up at Iseult’s arrival. Then their attentions quickly latched on to the man following just behind.
Caden looked absurd inside the tent. He was a tall man by Cartorran standards, and even more so by Nomatsi standards.
His Threads, though, were what really shrank the tent down three sizes.
The erratic newness of his magic, fiery and fierce.
The sputtering pale discomfort of being in a place he’d never expected to be.
The green determination encasing all the other shades because although he hadn’t expected to be here, he would make the most of it.
There were also bolts of white fear. A sign he knew perfectly well that his emotions were visible to these women. A sign he wished it were not so. He might be used to Iseult, but strangers reading his mind too?
Iseult couldn’t blame Caden for such feelings; it was how most people felt when meeting a Threadwitch and one of myriad reasons Nomatsis were so hated across the Witchlands.
“Welcome.” This was Alma, rising from the desk, because she was ever the diplomat—and also, the more adept at fashioning her Threadwitch face into the expected emotions. Were they her real feelings? Iseult still didn’t know. But at least now, Iseult no longer let her confusion bother her.
Alma swept toward Caden, her Threadwitch black gown twirling and sucking up all light. He had paused at the ring of stools that always fill a Threadwitch’s home. “I am called Alma,” she said in Dalmotti. “And this is Gretchya. Your bag—I can take it.”
Caden bobbed his head, the discomfort quavering toward a teal certainty in his Threads.
“Caden fitz Grieg. And I can handle the bag. It’s heavy.
” He did let it slide to his feet. Then squared his body toward Gretchya and did exactly as Iseult had taught him: with his hands at his sides, he bowed and said in smooth, lilting Nomatsi, “Thank you for welcoming me to your tribe.”
The reaction was instant. Alma smiled—a real one, Iseult suspected—and Gretchya’s posture at the pot relaxed.
She had not wanted an outsider to join them.
But the truth was Gretchya couldn’t say no.
Caden’s presence here was a favor to Her Imperial Majesty of Cartorra, and that Imperial Majesty of Cartorra had thrust so much coin, food, weapons, and horses onto this makeshift tribe that Gretchya felt indebted to her very Threadwitch core.
Gretchya dropped her stirring spoon and wiped her hands on her gown. Then she approached Caden in the same way Alma had.
“Welcome.” This was in Dalmotti. “Sit, and we will feed you, Caden.” She glanced now at Iseult, her face carved into its usual Threadwitch implacability. “You too, Iseult. We have much to discuss with this visitor, and the night could run long.”
The conversation that followed went better in many ways than Iseult had prepared for.
Caden’s Threads settled into a calmness that spoke well of his adaptability.
She’d known the man had been sent on countless missions across the Witchlands, to strange situations ranging from conning a Truthwitch out of coins in Dalmotti to capturing that same Truthwitch in the Pirate Republic of Saldonica.
But he’d been so consumed by grief these last weeks—and his new, unsteady magic—that Iseult had forgotten this other side of him.
The Chiseled Cheater, Iseult kept thinking as she watched him turn on the charm in much the way Safi or Mathew would. He had a mission again; it would hopefully bring him to his friends.
Gretchya and Alma could interpret Caden’s Threads too, and although they themselves might not wear any Threads Iseult could see, she knew her mother well enough to sense Gretchya was warming to Caden as they sat on their stools and pored over a map of the Witchlands.
“The River Tine will get you south,” Caden murmured in Dalmotti, “but it is usually iced over here, where blizzards funnel out from the Windswept Plains—although you should have almost a full month before that happens. Winter comes more slowly in the south.”
“We will have to leave the Tine before that, I believe.” Gretchya tapped several spots near the map’s center. “These cities here are well known for hostility against Nomatsis.”
“Right.” Caden’s Threads moldered with both shame and frustration. He swiped a hand through his chestnut hair. “In that case, we can disembark here.”
We, Iseult noted. Not you. A quick transition—and she suspected Gretchya and Alma heard it too. She sipped at her borgsha. Then frowned at the half-eaten stew. The horse meat, taken when the beasts died at the Moon Mother’s will, was overcooked and greasy. She’d never enjoyed it.
“Not to your liking?” Alma asked. She sat two stools away, her face cast in firelight. Gone was the golden green of her eyes; now, they were pure silver. As pale as the icicles gathering on the trees outside.
“I have gotten spoiled off food fit for an empress.” Iseult flushed.
“As have we. Safiya has given us so much. But…” Alma slid over to the stool beside Iseult. This near, her eyes practically glowed. “You will have to adjust your tastes once you are on the road.”
Iseult tensed.
“When do you leave?” Alma asked.
Iseult’s tongue fattened in her mouth. “W-when Dom fon Eron d-decides our armies are large enough.”
Alma’s eyebrows arced. She didn’t believe Iseult at all, but she also didn’t contradict her.
So Iseult gave up. “How did you know?”
Alma dipped closer. “Because Rikra, who is selling you a tent, ratted you out. Although, to be fair, she only said something because I cornered her and asked.”
Iseult sighed. “I see.”
“This is not a bad thing,” Alma insisted.
“She was going to sell you a broken tent for too much coin, and I will give you a good one for free. And.” She leaned closer.
Then she half whispered: “I have assembled more things that might be useful. We Nomatsis travel so much, you know. We have useful tools that weigh less and pack smaller. It’s all in a bag behind the tent. I’ve covered it with pine branches.”
Iseult didn’t know how to respond to this. It felt so much like a moment a month ago when Alma had followed her through the forest east of here and given her a satchel of supplies. Iseult had asked why Alma had helped then, and Alma had answered: Because Moon Mother always protects her own.
Iseult didn’t ask Alma why she helped this time. She knew the answer would be the same—but now they both would remember the time Iseult hadn’t helped Alma at all.
“Does m-my mother know?”
“I have not discussed it with Gretchya, but I would think she can guess what you intend. After all, there is no other path before you.”
No, Iseult thought. There isn’t. She and Safi might not have known it, but they’d been locked into the future from the day they were born.
“I saw her, you know,” Alma continued, still so near.
Still so quiet. “She was surrounded by stars and shadow. And I felt whole. I felt unafraid and loved to the core of my Threads.” Alma’s glowing eyes held steady on Iseult’s face.
“But she is dying, and I fear these new Threads, this new slow cleaving—it is her attempt to take back what little power she can.”
“Yes,” Iseult agreed on an exhale.
“Until you heal the final Well, none of us are safe. Any of us might be the next target Moon Mother takes from.”
Iseult nodded.
“So it is good that you go now to heal the Well. And if there is anything more I can do to help you along your way, then you need only ask.”
“Ah.” Iseult sighed again, a sad, heavy sound that sank into the earth. There was so much building inside her. More than her lungs could contain. More than her heart or chest could hold.
She forced her throat to swallow. Then she clasped Alma’s bicep. “Y-y-you…” She paused. Tried again: “You have already done too much, Alma. I will ask for no more.”
“It is not for you that I make this offer, though.” Alma’s lips twitched in a way that might be a smile, or might simply be annoyance. “It is for Moon Mother, because if you do not heal the Well, we all will suffer.”
Iseult let her hand slide off Alma. “In that case, all I ask is that you keep my mother safe. And … well, Caden, too.”
“I will watch over them both, Iseult. With every tool and weapon I have.”
There was the swelling again, but now it pushed against Iseult’s skull. She wiggled her nose—once, twice—before standing. It stretched a distance between her and the girl who could have been her sister if only Iseult had let her in.
Caden did not look up. His Threads were fully concentrated on the map. Gretchya, however, did. She blinked at her daughter, her eyes nearly orange in the firelight. And she nodded once, knowing. Or perhaps there was something else, something almost sad, almost frightened.
But something that her Threadwitch training still couldn’t let free.
Iseult twisted away. “I w-will find you and my mother again in Saldonica,” she promised Alma. A simple good-bye before she left the tent. Left the tribe.
The night and its moon whispered a Nomatsi good-bye as Iseult found the pack Alma had left beneath furry branches. It was a proper Nomatsi pack, with structural rods meant to be hefted onto the back or alternatively reshaped across a horse.
Alma had added a Nomatsi shield too, a wooden square meant to protect one’s body when on the run.
Iseult’s lungs compressed, pushing air from her chest as she hefted the pack onto her shoulders. Snowflakes fell anew, tender things. Hesitant even, as if they weren’t sure the world was ready for them.
Iseult wasn’t sure either, but she set off into the night anyway. Cold embraced her. Snow swallowed her footsteps.