Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
Their blood was the wrong color.
Iseult had noticed it as soon as she’d cut into the first raider with her moon scythes. But it wasn’t until now, with the battle won and twenty-seven raiders scattered across the snow, that she could finally see it was not merely blood that was corrupted. Their Threads were the wrong color too.
All of them were cleaving. Just like the blacksmith and his wife and all the countless others she hadn’t been able to save. Every one of these Red Sails possessed faint Severed Threads at the heart of their beings.
“Why have y-you attacked us?” Iseult asked the woman with the pistol. She was the only raider still conscious.
“Because you were in our way.” The woman smiled, revealing teeth coated in blood. Her Threads hummed with a disturbing satisfaction.
“And is that smoke in the distance from you?” Safi clutched her right arm to her side, the pale furs marred with her blood. Red, all of it red, and from a wound that would need tending. “Over there—did you attack others?”
“They had the plague,” the raider answered, as if this explained anything. “So we had to.”
Iseult frowned at the black smoke choking the sky. Then she frowned at Aeduan, who crouched over two raiders. One by one, he was freezing the blood in their veins. Any who were still conscious, he pushed into sleep.
He was tired though. Iseult could see that even from here.
“She’s telling the truth, Iz.” Safi bent closer to Iseult. “Or at least she thinks she is. She really believes whomever they just killed had the plague.”
Iseult’s frown whittled deeper. She supposed it made a tortured sort of sense: the plague had marked the end of the Republic of Arithuania, and burning bodies had stopped its spread. But the dark blood of these raiders, the Severed Threads mingling across this clearing …
“Why do you think it’s the plague?” Iseult asked.
“Because they have the same pustules. The Raider King told us what to look for, so we do.”
Safi’s expression—and her Threads—turned grim. Cleaving, of course, made pustules. “So the Raider King has sent you to kill anyone with the plague?”
The woman spat shadowed blood onto the snow. Her Threads settled into a stubborn forest green. There was a hesitancy to them, though. A fear, even, that made Iseult think perhaps Ragnor did not know how many they were slaughtering to eradicate this so-called plague.
Safi sighed. “You have two choices here. Either you can cooperate with us, and we’ll leave you and these other survivors with healing supplies.” She turned a meaningful glare at the nearly thirty bodies scattered about. “Or you can choose not to cooperate, and we’ll leave you here with nothing.”
The woman sneered.
“Storm’s coming.” Iseult pointed to the sky. “I d-don’t think you want to be stuck here.”
The woman looked neither worried nor impressed, so Safi gave a lopsided shrug. “Good enough. The gods can’t say we didn’t try.” She turned away, flickers of pain wincing in her Threads. “Come on, Knifey,” she hollered at Aeduan. “We’re leaving these bastards behind.”
Aeduan straightened. His eyes pierced Iseult’s. One heartbeat. Two. Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch. Then his attention skated to the sneering raider.
Her Threads flashed with blue comprehension. “Hells, you’re him, aren’t you? The Raider King’s son. Which makes you two … Oh, this is rich. He’s going to be so happy. He told us to be on the lookout, now here you are.”
Two things happened in that moment. First, Iseult saw the woman’s Threads blare with a new shade, one that spoke of Aether magic and connections spanning miles.
Second: the woman’s whole body locked up.
So fast it made her muscles crunch inward like a dead spider.
Then she did die. Iseult saw her Threads snuff out moments before she went limp against the black-striped snow.
Iseult spun toward Aeduan. His arm was raised, his fingers flexed as his eyes—now pure red—once more pierced hers from across the bloodied grass and snow.
“What the rut, Knifey!” Safi exclaimed. “We needed her!”
“No,” Iseult said. “He did the right thing, Safi. Look.” She knelt beside the fallen woman and tore the glove from her right hand.
A Witchmark winked into the gray light. A hollow circle with a scripted letter inside. “Voicewitch,” Iseult said.
“Well, shit.” Safi wiped her bloodied blade on the snow. “Shit in a gutter, shit on my ancestors. Was she able to send a message before you stopped her?”
“We have to assume so.” Aeduan’s voice was inflectionless.
He was the least exerted of their ranks, and also the most detached.
But just as Iseult did not need to see a wound to know it was infected, she didn’t need to see Aeduan’s Threads to know he was agitated.
Not from the fight, although that certainly contributed …
But by what the Voicewitch had said. The orders she’d described from the Raider King to kill anyone who might be sick. That was his father, after all. A man he’d once followed and trusted.
“We’ll have to stay off the road,” Safi said.
“Yes.” Aeduan blinked slowly. “The horses ran off, but I will find them and bring them back.”
“No.” Iseult reached for him before he could stride away. She didn’t touch him, though. “We should stay t-together, Aeduan.” Do not lock up your feelings and walk away.
His lips parted. One heartbeat stuttered past. Two. Then his spine slackened ever so slightly. “As you wish. We will stay together.”
The last thing Iseult saw before she followed Aeduan and Safi into the grass was a bloodied head fallen atop the snow. Empty eyes stared into frozen nothing. Sever, sever, twist and sever. For all that she had avoided using her magic and avoided taking control …
People had still died here. The wickedness had come anyway.
It slowed them considerably to be off the road.
Snow fell. Small, hard flakes that found their way into gaps in Iseult’s clothing.
The high grass whipped against the horses.
Night was fast approaching. It also slowed them that Safi was hurt.
It wasn’t a life-threatening wound, but it was bad enough that it would need tending—and bad enough that nothing but curses had left Safi’s lips for almost an hour.
Until she abruptly groaned out: “What’s that?” Safi pointed with her left hand; Iseult squinted into the darkening sky. Something thrust up from the grass, almost like a tree except it was only the trunk.
Aeduan was the one to answer: “A shrine.” He had once more tucked himself inside his hood. His voice was muffled by snowfall and salamander fibers. “There are many of them across the Plains.”
Iseult nodded; she knew of these shrines, for Nomatsis often stopped at them to pay their respects to Middle Sister Swallow. “Is it safe to make camp there?” she asked him. “Or will N-Nomatsis stop there too?”
What she didn’t add was that most Nomatsis had taken up the cause of the Raider King, so she couldn’t even trust her own people.
“I think we can stop for the night.” Aeduan’s hood swiveled, as if he sniffed with his Bloodwitchery.
But there was no one for his magic to find, just as there were no Threads to brush against Iseult’s magic.
And this time, Iseult really reached—even as it drained her.
Even as she felt her other senses get muddy and numbed.
She couldn’t let them be ambushed again. She didn’t think they could survive another fight like that.
Soon, they were near enough to the shrine that grass and snow could no longer hide it: a stone pillar poking from the soil, twice Iseult’s height.
Winds had kicked all the snow to one side of the clearing, carrying with it offerings: food, trinkets, coins, and the uncut stones of a Threadwitch.
The Nomatsis feared Swallow’s fickle temper on the Plains; these gifts were meant to appease her.
Safi was the first to dismount—stiffly and with no attempts to hide her pain. Not that her Threads could hide it anyway. “Sit,” Iseult ordered, pointing to a smooth, smaller stone rising up from the snow. “Aeduan and I will make camp.”
Safi scoffed. A sound that was loud enough to reach across the winds. “You’ve got tits for brains if you think I’ll let you do this alone. I’m injured, not useless.”
Two seconds later, a snowball hit Safi’s head—and Safi’s laugh split the falling night.
In the end, Safi did help Iseult and Aeduan by using her heels to drive Nomatsi tent stakes into the earth.
Then they guided the horses into the tent, arranging them at the back and using the remaining space to lay out a single pallet for Safi.
This would not be the first night they’d shared their tent with the horses, but it would be the first night someone was injured.
Safi was worse off than she claimed—a fact which became obvious as soon as she tried to remove her cloak and her arm wouldn’t lift higher than a few inches.
It made her face and Threads crumple with pain.
So Iseult helped her peel off layers, each one more soaked with blood than the last. It filled the tent with a coppery scent that overwhelmed even the smell of the horses.
“Well, that doesn’t look great.” Safi grimaced at her arm in the light of a Firewitched lantern. They hadn’t made a proper fire; the smoke would be too dangerous. For now, the warmth of so many bodies would have to be enough. “It didn’t hurt that much when it happened.”
“Could you not sense how bad this was getting?” Iseult aimed her question at Aeduan, her voice sharp. “Why didn’t your magic alert you?”
He didn’t answer right away. He was rubbing down the horses, and his ministrations to Cloud continued uninterrupted. Gentle, steady. Until at last he paused near Cloud’s hindquarters and said, “Yes, I sensed the blood, but it was not a life-threatening wound.”
“And it still isn’t,” Safi insisted. “I’ve had worse.” She grunted and shifted her weight. The lantern wobbled.
“Sit st-still, Safi.” Iseult studied the gash. It was an ugly shredding of skin and muscle that hadn’t sliced cleanly through. Bits of cloth and fur were stuck in the open flesh, and although Iseult had brought Evrane’s healing kit …
Well, maybe they should have simply brought Evrane.
“We’ve switched places.” Safi’s voice was light, joking—but her Threads gave her away. “Only a few months ago, you were the one with an injury, and I was the one taking care of you.”
Iseult was willing to play along. “You mean Evrane took care of me.”
“I helped her.”
“Sure. By pissing off a prince, attracting sea foxes, kidnapping a Firewitch healer—”
“Yes, yes, I did all of that too.” Safi laughed, but it rang false. And no matter how many times Iseult murmured Relax, Safi couldn’t seem to soften her muscles or deepen her breaths.
After tending the horses, Aeduan brought a second lantern to Iseult’s side. All of their camping gear was now from Alma, which meant all was easily stowed and carried.
At Aeduan’s whispered Ignite, flames flared, while outside, the winds briefly flared too. The tent wavered and flapped. Drafts of frosty air swirled through the gaps.
Iseult smeared a Waterwitch salve on Safi’s arm, meant to keep the blood in her wound pure.
Then a Firewitch salve to heal Safi’s muscles, and finally an Earthwitch salve for the skin.
Scents of lavender and calendula soon replaced the smell of blood.
And soon, Safi did relax, just like the winds outside.
“Thank you,” she mumbled once Iseult had wrapped the wound. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me hundreds.” Iseult tried for a smile. “But I stopped counting years ago.”
Safi matched her smile.
“Do you want a Painstone?”
“No.” Safi bit her lip. “Let’s save those, in case I need them to, ah, you know…”
Iseult nodded. In case you need them to get through a fight. In case you need them at the Well.
They were so close to Poznin now.
After unrolling two sleeping pads, Iseult helped Safi lie down. Then they shared the cold remains of a rabbit caught the day before. Once Iseult was satisfied Safi had eaten enough, she layered a blanket over her. “Sleep.” She tried again for a smile.
This time, Safi didn’t match it. She simply closed her eyes, and in seconds, her Threads hazed into sleep.