Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
The next day, Safi wasn’t doing well.
On the bright side, she hadn’t suffered a single headache since leaving the hunting lodge. Her brain felt keen, her body a thousand pounds lighter. And only in the absence of that pressure and that pain could she fully grasp how much agony she’d been living under.
On the shitty, not-so-bright side, Safi’s arm felt like a volcano bleeding lava, and it was basically the only thing she could think about.
The sharpest heat radiated from the hole in her arm, where the iron shot had pierced skin.
But the pain wasn’t contained there; she hurt all the way from her left ear down to her left fingernails.
And while she was pretty sure she’d stopped bleeding now, she was also pretty sure she might die.
Because what she hadn’t told Iseult—or Aeduan either—was that it wasn’t a normal iron shot that had pierced her.
It had been a Firewitched pistol, and the shot itself had been Firewitched too.
As in, bewitched with a magic that would create flames inside her body, slowly burning her from the inside out.
She’d learned of such weapons as a child. Habim, after all, was a Firewitch and such weapons were a favored tool of the Marstoki Empire. Safi had also seen plenty of these Firewitched weapons up close during her time in the Marstoki Empire as Empress Vaness’s personal Truthwitch.
In other words: she knew when she was screwed.
Each jolt of Dandelion on uneven terrain made Safi’s brain melt. Each gust of wind across the plains made her skin burn. She was boiling inside her furs, but she knew the fever was a lie. If she took off her clothes to relieve the heat, she would freeze … and she wouldn’t even feel it happening.
She did lower her scarf out of desperation, savoring each icy gust of Arithuanian winds. Pretending that those winds were cooling her, healing her, helping her.
At lunch, she was half tempted to take the Painstone Iseult offered again … but if things were this bad now, then she had to assume they were only going to get worse. So Safi gritted her teeth, forced out a smile—false, false, false—and refused the magical relief that was offered to her.
By midafternoon, she was starting to worry that losing consciousness might actually be the greater risk.
In fact, she was quite certain the only reason she hadn’t yet collapsed was because the Cahr Awen souls inside her wouldn’t allow it.
They were so close to the Air Well; they would not let her turn back.
It literally felt like they solidified her muscles, her spine and limbs.
You will stay upright and you will keep riding.
That pain is unimportant. All that matters is the Well.
Yes, Safi agreed—although only because she had to agree with them.
And to keep herself distracted and awake, she made herself turn all of her attention onto Aeduan.
The monk rode diagonally behind her, his posture unrelenting on Surefoot’s back.
His white cloak a billowing, intimidating thing around him and his face hidden inside his hood.
Really, Safi had no idea what Iseult saw in him.
He was bad at cards, worse at smiling, and worst of all at conversation.
Admittedly, he’d stayed true to his word last night and said not a thrice-damned thing about Safi’s fever or her weakness or all the agony he must be smelling on her blood.
But still, he was so boring. The only way to get any glimmer of character out of him was to pester him until he cracked.
“You tried to kill us,” Safi said, nudging Dandelion up to Surefoot’s side. “Several times, in fact.” Each word that came out was stronger than the last. “I think you owe us an apology. Me and Iseult, I mean. I’m sure the horses are fine.”
“No.” This was all Aeduan said.
“Come on now, Knifey—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“—it isn’t hard to admit wrongdoing. They even say it’s good for you.
Healing for the soul, apparently.” Safi pressed her uninjured hand to her chest. Her clothes were slick with sweat, but at least she was having fun.
“I don’t know how true that is since I myself have never done anything wrong, but I do trust advice shared by the general they. ”
“No.” This time, Aeduan rolled his wrists—and Safi couldn’t help but smile.
“You tried to kill us.”
“I tried to capture you.”
“Which almost resulted in our deaths, making it the same in the end.”
Aeduan’s fingers tightened on Surefoot’s reins. “It is not my fault you were inept.”
“Inept?” Safi gasped. “You do recall that Iseult and I are the Cahr Awen, so by default, we are the opposite of inept. We are … ept.”
“I don’t include Iseult in my assessment.”
Safi scoffed. It came out weaker than she wanted, and her vision smeared with the effort. Not good. “If you won’t apologize,” she made herself continue, “then how about a thank-you? I am, after all, the one who introduced you to Iseult, and you two seem to like each other very much.”
Now Aeduan’s eyes flashed red. An excellent development. “No.”
“Knifey, you have to work with me on this. We’re going to be together a long time, I think. Assuming you and Iseult really are—”
“Leave him alone,” Iseult barked from Cloud’s back. She yanked her scarf down to give Safi the full severity of her death glare.
And Safi hoisted her eyebrows innocently. “Well, why don’t you thank me then, Iz? Someone here owes me some gratitude. At the very least, these are all my horses from my imperial stables.”
“I take it you’re feeling better?”
“Much.” Lie, Safi’s magic scraped—and as if in agreement, the flames in her arm fanned hotter. She had to fight to keep her face from changing. She prayed her Threads wouldn’t give her away.
A frown tightened on Iseult’s forehead.
“I am ravenous, though,” Safi continued. Lie, lie, lie. “When do you think we’ll stop to make camp?” She batted her lashes. Innocent. Pure. She was not dying by degrees, but rather a hungry Truthwitch who liked the beating wind against her face.
Iseult glanced at Aeduan, and he—to his credit—stared straight back with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish slowly rotting on the Venaza City harbor. Well done, Knifey, Safi thought at him. Iseult might not trust Safi’s reactions, but she definitely trusted Aeduan’s.
And while part of Safi felt dishonest, manipulative, and generally terrible for lying to her Threadsister, most of her was simply glad that Aeduan was willing to ally with her in this. They had to reach the Well.
“We should travel as far as we can before nightfall,” Iseult answered eventually, gesturing to the horizon.
“That storm is getting closer, and I’d like to reach the forests east of Poznin before it breaks.
Can you ride any faster, Safi? The hills ahead are less overgrown. We could pick up the pace.”
No! Safi wanted to scream. My gods, no! But she couldn’t scream that, couldn’t scream anything at all. They had to keep moving forward; she couldn’t—wouldn’t—be the reason they slowed enough for more raiders to ambush them.
“Yes,” she gritted out. “Let’s ride.” She waited until Iseult had turned her attention to Cloud before looking again at Aeduan. He drew back his hood, just enough that Safi could more easily see his face in the grayness of the day.
“Well?” she said with more edge than he deserved. “Are you going to help?”
He blinked—a movement Safi was starting to recognize as an acknowledgment. But rather than do as Safi expected, with his eyes glowing and his magic taking hold of her, he simply leaned toward her, hand extended.
A small chunk of rose quartz glittered on his palm. A Painstone. He must have snuck it from the healer kit when Iseult wasn’t looking. “Use it,” he commanded softly. “And I will save the other measures for later.”
Safi swallowed. Somehow Aeduan’s arm was completely still beside her, even though Surefoot ambled beneath him.
The Painstone flashed and shone.
Safi yanked it to her and shoved it down the front of her shirt.
The quartz touched her damp skin. Relief soared through her.
Up her chest, into her shoulder, and then down, down into the flames.
The magic wouldn’t heal the injury, but it would deplete the fires of air so they couldn’t blaze quite so brightly.
“Go,” Aeduan now ordered. “Before Iseult notices us.”
Safi nodded. She didn’t say thank you, she didn’t say anything. Her voice was caught somewhere in her abdomen, the relief from pain so great she thought she might start crying. She dug her heels into Dandelion and let her gelding shoot her forward. Jolt, jolt, jolt.
Behind her, the Bloodwitch followed, Iseult trailing last.
Iseult knew Safi was lying. She wasn’t a fool; she could see Safi’s Threads, for one, and for two, she knew Safi’s false bravado as intimately as she knew her own. Where Iseult would become more stoic, more centered to push through pain …
Safi just got louder.
Iseult had seen Aeduan give Safi the Painstone, just as she’d seen when he took it from the healer kit.
Why Safi would accept it from him and not Iseult, Iseult decided not to ask.
For now, she was simply grateful that Aeduan apparently had greater powers of persuasion than she, since there were two potential paths Iseult saw before them: they could continue going slower, stopping often to accommodate Safi’s pain.
Then the storm would almost certainly crack down right overtop their heads.
Or else the raiders that must be hunting would catch up.
Or their trio could push through Safi’s pain and try to reach the safety of a distant forest before the storm unloaded and raiders arrived.
Option two was clearly better, and now that Safi’s Threads had changed—gone were the skittering, frantic lightning bolts of pain, replaced by something muted and calm—Iseult felt as if they could finally push hard.