Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
For three days, Iseult pushed everyone as hard as their horses would allow. After all, Eron must have sent people after them; they needed to be so far ahead, his riders could never catch up.
In some ways, it was good they had nothing more than three Nomatsi packs to sustain them.
They were lighter, faster. And in some ways, it was very good they had Aeduan.
Without their food supplies, now burned to ash, his magic let them find rabbits and fowl that would otherwise stay hidden in the snow.
Occasionally, the trio passed camps at the roadside. Sometimes, they spotted smoke on the horizon. Twice, they found traveling caravans of traders. Yet no one ever bothered them; no one ever asked, Why are you traveling east into war?
On the fourth day, the gusts that had howled off the Windswept Plains softened, and for the first time since leaving the imperial lodge, they let their horses slow to a walking pace.
But clouds hung like frowns on the horizon, and it felt to Iseult like the brewing storm waited for a moment when she might look the other way.
Then it would strike with all its might.
It reminded Iseult of the storm Corlant had conjured, when he had cleaved the very sky to chase her.
On the fifth day, they rode hard again. Poznin was close now, three days at most if this blizzard would hold. The lands rolled with uneven, unpredictable hills, as if some god had left their shallow footprints across the plains. It made seeing ahead difficult.
As did the grass that hugged the highway, high as their horses’ chests and spanning as far as their eyes could see.
Halfway through the fifth day, they spotted smoke. Black coils had blended into the storm clouds. Aeduan drew up his mount, letting Iseult and Safi trot to a stop beside him. Then they all waited, their horses’ breaths pluming into the cold as their masters gazed ahead and wind beat against them.
That same wind scattered the smoke, taking thick, black clots and shredding it to papery tendrils.
“That’s more than just a campfire,” Safi said. Her Threads were a muddied mixture of suspicion and worry.
“And the highway goes right through it.” Aeduan, whose face was hidden within his Carawen hood, pointed to the road’s dip and rise. It would indeed take them directly into the smoke and fires. “We will have to circle around.”
Neither Iseult nor Safi responded to this. Instead they met each other’s eyes. “Someone might be hurt,” Iseult said. Cold stung her cheeks and nose.
Safi lowered the scarf across her face. Her freckled cheeks shone red. “We can’t risk finding that out, Iz.”
Iseult’s nose twitched. She knew Safi was right, but that didn’t make it better. Either we lose thousands of lives now, Leopold had said in the Dreaming, or we lose the entirety of the Witchlands when Sirmaya dies. Tell me which sounds preferable to you.
“All right.” Iseult nodded to Aeduan. “Lead us off the road.”
He bobbed his head, eyes flaring red within the shadows of his hood.
Then he steered Surefoot into the tall grass.
Safi followed atop Dandelion, while Iseult took up the tail with Cloud.
This was their usual arrangement, for Aeduan could reach ahead for blood scents while Iseult could reach behind for Threads.
The grass was a new challenge, though, slowing them severely.
Which turned out to be the point.
Threads suddenly wavered at the edge of Iseult’s magic, closing in fast. “Raiders!” she shouted at the same moment Aeduan roared, “Attack!”
Then the raiders were there. Tens of Threads zooming in from all sides in an ambush that couldn’t be escaped.
Some Threads bore magics. Some only a thrill of cruelty.
Yet all wore a shade like violent iron, and there was no stopping the response of Iseult’s magic in kind.
The bad side of it that liked to sing, Sever, sever, twist and sever.
She squashed it down. Hard. That magic was only for final measures. Only in situations of last resort. Iseult had blades; she would use them.
Aeduan was already off his mount. Safi too, their blades unsheathing as figures manifested in the grass, hulking shapes lit by brutality.
Threads that break, Threads that die.
“Aeduan!” Iseult shouted. “Can you freeze them before they arrive?”
Aeduan glanced back. His hood had fallen, his eyes glowed red. “Some, but not all.”
“Then do it,” Safi barked, her Threads blazing with imperial expectation.
“Yes.” Aeduan stretched out his arms. His eyes flamed so red it sent lines across his face. And Iseult watched as the nine nearest raiders became statues within the golden grass. Their Threads burst with panic and surprise.
But they didn’t pass out. Instead of Aeduan’s usual magic to dominate them, his hands began to quaver—and already, there were more raiders crashing this way.
Iseult rounded toward Cloud. The horse sensed the tide of violence barreling toward her, but she was trained for war.
She made no movement as Iseult freed her weapons from the saddle.
First a moon scythe of sharpened steel. Then a second scythe from a mountain bat’s claw.
It was the only remnant of Owl that Iseult had, and every time she held the hilt—every time she felt the claw radiate with ancient Threads of earth and stone—she thought of the little girl who wasn’t a little girl at all.
Long ago, when the gods walked among us.
Iseult turned to Safi, and without another word, the Threadsisters launched themselves at the first raiders finally toppling through the frozen grass.
All Safi saw were Red Sails. Because of course it was Red Sails. When the slaughter was at its ugliest, they were always near.
And this slaughter was ugly. Eight raiders stormed from the grass toward Safi and Iseult, and there was no missing the blood and soot across their vicious faces. Whatever that smoke was from, people had died there—and here were their murderers.
Two men at the front split apart to try to flank Safi and Iseult.
Fools. She and Iseult had been trained for this.
The reactions lived inside them, written onto their bones by a Firewitch general who accepted no failure.
It was a dance, a rhythm, a gliding arrangement of steps that required two partners.
And although it might have been months since Safi had fought with Iseult, they were still Threadsisters.
Still sun and moon, light and shadow, two halves forever orbiting each other.
The raiders reached the girls.
Initiate. Safi ducked for one man’s knees with her shoulder. He went down while her blade went up. Complete. Iseult bounded over Safi, both moon scythes extended toward the second raider.
Neither man had time to react before steel sliced through and blood sprayed. Hot blood that seemed to sizzle the instant it was exposed to air—as did the organs oozing out with it.
Their bodies hit the snow, but two more raiders were already leaping up from the grass. Safi and Iseult twirled toward each other. Iseult swiped with her mountain bat claw at the first. Safi attacked with steel at the second.
And somehow, as the incoming raider growled at Safi with savagery, as his blood-smeared cutlass swung at Safi’s head, she felt her own sword become the truest steel that had ever sung.
It was as if her magic responded in that moment, reaching down her arm, her fingers, sliding into the hilt and blade.
She’d bound her witchery before. First, when she’d made the Truth-lens in Marstok. It had required careful study, using the book Understanding Threads to make the correct knots and braids, loops and weavings.
Second, when she’d turned the lens into a necklace. She’d only had intuition and memory then. It had been slow work, but satisfying.
And now, here she was a third time, and it required almost no effort at all. Here were the Threads of her power; here was the Arlenni Loop, exactly as she’d once seen it on the page. Then the Vergedi knot—harder to make, but stronger in the end.
All of this happened in the space between seconds. The stutter between heartbeats. Then leather and fur split apart, followed by muscle and bone. With a single, frictionless movement, Safi carved off the man’s head.
He went down, his head following a split second later—and with the same expression of shock scored onto it that Safi must be wearing as well. How had she done that? And without any thought at all, only instinct?
No time to wonder or contemplate. Another raider struck, lashing out with a long, pointed blade. But when his steel connected with Safi’s parry, the blade snapped in two.
This was as unexpected as the decapitation—although it shouldn’t have been. She’d imprinted her magic onto the steel. Now it was a blade so true, nothing could stand in its way.
Safi kicked the man in the groin. Flung a flat fist to his chin. Then she levered her leg behind his, and a heartbeat later, the man hit the ground beside his fellows.
The snow in the clearing had turned red. “Incoming,” Iseult yelled, darting away from their miniature battlefield as another clump of raiders tumbled from the grass.
Three froze mid-stride, then collapsed. Safi didn’t need to look back to know Aeduan had joined them.
His magic, strangely weak before, seemed to have returned in full force.
Which was why, rather than careen directly for the remaining five raiders as Iseult was doing, Safi cut left toward an exposed flank where raiders coalesced in the grass.
Two toppled toward her. They were easily dispatched with her sword that could apparently slice through spine and steel now. True, true, true.
But that was when a third raider whom Safi hadn’t noticed—a man who must have come at her from behind—sprang. The force of his tackle crumpled them both to the earth. Knocked her sword from her grasp. She rolled and wiggled, but her winter furs slowed her.
The man’s face was the only part of him Safi could see. It was thick with stubble. His breath—hot, foul—panted over her. He was trying to pin her to the ground, both his hands pushing her arms into cold tundra.
So Safi let him. For one breath, she relaxed fully and let him get into the position he thought would give him power. False, her magic seemed to laugh. False, false, lies. Then the breath had ended and the man was leering down. Spit fell from his lips. He wasn’t much older than she.
Safi grinned at him before bracing her feet against the man’s, then hefting up her hips and flipping him sideways. He fell, and Safi used the moment to roll the other way. He grabbed for her legs. His fingers clamped onto her calf, and he tried to drag her back. But she had her sword now.
Pivot. Swing. It cut through the arm that held her. At the elbow, clean as a butcher’s knife through fresh meat.
He screamed. His blood sprayed.
And it was then, in the frantic moments while Safi scrabbled to her feet and another raider sprinted toward her, that she saw something she hadn’t noticed on the other raiders: this man’s blood wasn’t truly red.
It was too dark. It should have been scarlet upon the snow, but instead it was almost black.
He was cleaving.
No time to assess what that might mean for this fight. The next raiders had arrived, and Iseult was facing a woman who was just as nimble and fast as she was. Worse, she was drawing a Firewitched pistol from her belt. She aimed. Safi dove. The single shot cracked out.
Pain lanced across Safi’s left shoulder. Down to her fingers, up into her skull. Had she been holding her sword in this hand, she would have dropped it. As it was, though, nothing vital was damaged—so despite pain bright and burning, the fight still pumped through her like a sunrise.
Safi ran for the woman with the pistol as the woman tried to reload. The cold made her slow. Or maybe the intensity of it all made Safi fast. Either way, she reached the woman before the pistol winched high again.
“Big mistake,” Safi snarled, and in two arcs of her blade, she carved the pistol from the raider’s grasp—and carved away half her hand too. Then she aimed the sword at the woman’s neck.
Iseult, her cheeks flushed and blood-splattered, now staggered to Safi’s side. “Get on the ground,” she ordered the raider. “Now. Or we will put you there.”