Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
Caden fitz Grieg knew his own weaknesses.
Intimately. And one in particular had always bothered him: he was not well educated.
Wasn’t it bad enough to be a nobleman’s bastard?
Why did he have to be an ignorant one too?
He’d found ways to compensate, of course.
He couldn’t recite every emperor that had come before Henrick III or what the architectural style around the palace courtyard was (he thought those curvy things might be called buttresses?), but he could read people.
He knew what their emotions were as plainly as if they’d been written on their faces.
He’d asked Iseult det Midenzi—half in jest, half in seriousness—if this was what Thread magic was like.
She’d said no, but then, in that thoughtful way of hers, she’d added: Though I suppose that makes you even more dangerous than we are.
He hadn’t been sure what she meant by this, and now weeks later, he still didn’t know.
What he did know was that the Nomatsis didn’t like having him in their tribe.
And honestly, he couldn’t blame them.
Caden stood in the empty clearing where the tribe had disassembled their camp.
Tents had been folded down to their component parts, then rolled tightly into packs for all the mules and horses.
The cooking fires were long gone, no smoke to linger in the frostbitten air, and if the Nomatsis bustling about felt any disdain for the brown-haired, freckled Cartorran in their midst, they weren’t showing it. At least not in obvious ways.
Caden felt their secret glares. He felt their nervous confusion, and although he’d tried to ease it with a few smiles, he only ever got hostile stares in return.
Thank the hell-gates I’m not traveling with them anymore.
He’d been grateful for the idea, and he would have followed through.
But then the Bloodwitch had shown up at midnight with Lev’s and Zander’s nooses.
Monk Aeduan had found them right beside the Earth Well, so that was where Caden now planned to travel.
And honestly, Iseult’s mother had seemed as relieved as Caden that he wouldn’t be staying with the tribe.
Gretchya had, however, insisted she at least give him the promised Threadstones before he go.
So here he stood, awkward, stiff, and cold while he waited for the apprentice to walk his way.
She was beautiful. Unnaturally so. Like a sculpture carved from ice: he could look and appreciate the attention to detail, but ice didn’t make good company.
“Come,” she said in accented Dalmotti. “We are ready.”
Caden nodded, and feeling the stares of literally everyone in the tribe on his back, he traced after Alma through the camp’s remains to the only two things still intact in these old ruins: a Threadwitching desk and low stool.
Light and color flashed from tens of gemstones that lay before Iseult’s mother.
She sat with her eyes closed until Caden was near.
Then her hazel eyes snapped wide and fixed onto the space above his head.
One breath. Two. Her gaze lowered to meet his.
And Caden forced himself to stare. I know you see what I’m feeling, but I’m not afraid of you.
“We see what you feel,” Gretchya said as he came to a stop at the table, “but we do not see what you are thinking. Your mind, Hell-Bard, remains your own.”
These words didn’t comfort Caden much, but rather than say, I’d prefer if my feelings were my own too, he simply bowed his head. “Tell me what I must do.”
It was Alma, again, who spoke: “In order to find your Thread-family, we will need to craft three Threadstones. One will be for you, then two will be for your friends.”
“Choose,” Gretchya commanded, “three stones. Let your hands guide your arm.”
Don’t hands always guide arms? Caden frowned at the jewels. The attention of the tribe watching him was like a frozen wind he couldn’t wriggle out of. If he thought he’d felt tall and discordant in the middle of the camp, now he felt like the gap in a coat of armor.
He knew of Threadstones, of course. His fellow soldiers had loved to acquire them—sneakily, since Nomatsis weren’t welcome in Cartorra. For safety, for love, for beauty. But Caden had never had one for himself. And he’d never wanted one.
“May I touch the stones?”
“Yes,” Gretchya answered. “In fact, it is better if you do.”
Nodding, Caden reached out with both hands.
At first, he felt nothing beyond general foolishness.
He was waving his hands over a bunch of precious stones in an absolutely freezing forest while people gawped at him and pretended they didn’t.
To make it that much stranger, he would have gladly stolen every one of these jewels as a child.
Even today, so many years later, there was a part of him that itched to take things that weren’t his—fine things that would buy his mother food and firewood … and buy himself a warm meal or twenty.
As Caden thought about that childhood—about how he’d actually met Zander on the same streets, well before either of them had been pressed into the Hell-Bards—Caden felt a stirring at his fingertips.
It was a subtle warmth in all this cold, and it made him think of sunshine and green things.
His left hand moved down, down, seemingly all on its own, before plucking up an emerald.
Meanwhile Caden’s other hand felt tingly. Scratchy. Like the fuzzing of wool before an electric crack! is set free. Then the spark came, and it was above an opal.
Both stones were rough, uncut, muted in color and wild in shape. And both felt instantly right as soon as he grasped them. Ah, his heart seemed to say. Here is your Thread-family.
“Well done,” Alma murmured, and for the first time since meeting her, Caden sensed a slight waver of emotion. She was excited he’d found the stones. She liked this part of her job.
“One for you still,” Gretchya reminded. No feelings roiled off of her, no indication of how she’d known these stones belonged to Caden’s friends and not to him.
Caden drew in a long breath. “Good enough,” he replied. More to himself than to them. It was what his mother had always said: Good enough, Cay. Good enough. And he’d liked the solid, reliable way she’d said it. As if, although life might not be perfect, perfect was never what she’d wanted anyway.
His hands paused over a red rock that might have been a ruby.
He swallowed.
Clearly these gems—or perhaps these witches—were like fishing lines.
They reeled memories to the surface. His past, his person, his promises, and he’d be lying if he said this process didn’t frighten him.
It sounded so very much like being bound to the Loom.
Woven into something completely outside himself.
Except it all happened so quietly, so seamlessly.
While Gretchya grabbed the opal and the emerald, Alma retrieved the ruby.
Then they both withdrew spools of colored thread from large pockets in their coats and with fingers that were deft despite the cold, they wove and they wound. They whispered and they worked.
Bind and bend, build and blossom, family fills the heart.
They spoke in Nomatsi, of course, but Caden wasn’t entirely new to that language. Owl had spoken so much of it to Zander in Praga, and that giant man with his kind heart forever projecting outward had spent hours practicing it whenever he could.
Alma finished her stone first, since she only made one Threadstone. The Threadstone that was meant to be Caden’s. With small, focused movements, she tied off a braid of dark and light green threads, attached them to a leather thong, and handed it to him.
Now all of the tribe was openly watching, and many people had clustered in like an audience. Caden couldn’t decide if it was better than the sneaky scrutiny or not.
Alma rolled onto her toes so she could drape the threaded necklace around Caden’s neck. He had to bend deeply so she could reach him. Her breath ruffled his hair. She smelled like campfire and laurel. Then the leather was around his neck.…
And he felt exactly the same as he had a few seconds before. If some great magic had just happened, he wasn’t sensing it.
“Rubies,” Alma explained, “stand for honor and love, which you must have in abundance. And Threads in these shades represent focus and determination—which you will need to find your family.”
Caden swallowed. “And … the emerald?” he asked. “The opal?” Gretchya had just finished tying pink threads around the stones, and now she handed them to Alma.
“Emeralds stand for certainty,” Alma explained. “The man this stone represents is like an anchor in a storm. Opals, meanwhile, are for loyalty, and the woman this connects to would die for those she loves. The threads around both stones are the shade of deep, unbreakable family.”
Alma moved in once more, and Caden leaned down again to meet her. “I don’t feel any different,” he told her quietly. “Should the stones do something?”
“They are.” Alma made a slight, barely there smile. So tiny, Caden was certain only he spied it before it smoothed away. “The stones are now bound to your Thread-family. That means you can find them.”
“Right.” Caden wasn’t entirely sure what else to say. If he felt nothing while he wore these, then that wasn’t going to do much for him as he trekked west into the Ohrins. If anything, three gems of such size were going to make him a prime target for the criminals he’d once aspired to be.
“Well, uh, thank you,” he started. “I appreciate the stones, and—” He shut up. The stones were suddenly winking in the morning light. At first he thought it was sunlight playing over them, reflecting color into his eyes. But there was no sunlight today; the clouds let none through.
And now Alma was pushing in close again.