Chapter 30
THIRTY
Iseult had lied to Aeduan when she’d told him she would cleave the raiders.
She had lied when she’d said she would follow him and Safi into the forest. She had lied as soon as she’d realized she couldn’t control the Windwitches.
She hadn’t wanted to lie—she hadn’t known she was lying, in fact.
But it was as if the back of her brain had assembled a plan while the front of her brain simply fought to stay alive.
Then, once Aeduan had disappeared from sight, Safi already gone by then, the back of Iseult’s brain finally decided to provide her with its new decision. A single bolt of logic that sizzled through her like Severed Threads.
Leopold couldn’t kill the Raider King because he could not get close to him.
I can get close to him now that Aeduan and Safi are safe.
I can kill the Raider King.
Those were the key points of the plan—the primary thoughts that formed across her consciousness like music notes. And only now, as she was being escorted toward Poznin, did all the connections surface. The dots and lines that transform individual parts into a melody.
If the enemy is too small to target, then restrict their range of movement.
It was a lesson Habim had once taught Iseult and Safi years ago—and it was what both raider ambushes had successfully done.
But Habim had also taught the counterstrategy: Make multiple, smaller targets.
If a group was already too weak to stand against massive numbers, then there was no reason not to separate.
Break the hornet’s nest into individual hornets, then the enemy couldn’t contain everyone.
But Iseult wasn’t merely trying to shrink their unit—she didn’t merely want Safi and Aeduan to get away. She also knew that she had a unique opportunity to get close to the man leading everything. The heart, the brain, the strategic mastermind.
And if I do this, Aeduan will no longer have to face the possibility.
Iseult was careful to show no hostility as the raiders—of which there were at least a hundred—escorted her to Poznin.
There was a threat that hung in their Threads.
The raiders watched Iseult closely, and at any sign of violence, weapons would be drawn, witcheries aimed, and chains locked around her limbs.
For now, she walked unimpeded—but that was only because they’d locked her into a heretic’s collar.
The wood was smooth with age, the iron bolts cold on her skin.
And although it was true: she couldn’t use her cleaving magic, she could still see Threads.
As if the collar, rather than eliminate her magic, had simply punted her from the Void and into the Aether. Now you are a mere Threadwitch again.
Which was good. Excellent even, for now all these raiders thought they were safe against her. They all believed her fangs were muzzled, forgetting she still had claws.
It took the rest of the day to reach the first outskirts of the Raider King’s encampments.
Iseult had of course seen all these troops and factions and small settlements on the maps Eron fon Hasstrel kept constantly updated.
But dots and figurines upon a flattened surface could never capture the sheer scale of what actually surrounded the former capital of the Republic of Arithuania.
She felt it before she ever saw it. A change in her center of gravity, as if she were a rock rolling downhill. As if the weight of all these people and horses and tents and weapons and magics had sunk into the landscape and there could only be one path forward.
It was breathtaking and horrifying just how many troops the Raider King had beneath his banner—and there was a banner now: a simple black flag with a red crescent moon at the heart.
It was a combination of the Red Sails and the Baedyeds—but it was more than that, too.
The black felt like the black Threadwitches wore, and the red shade of the moon …
It felt gruesome. Like the Moon Mother reduced to arterial blood.
Leopold had been right: there was no way Iseult, Safi, and Aeduan could have gotten into this city without an army at their side.
Which made Iseult’s new plan that much more urgent.
As she was led over a newly built bridge across the wide river that slid past Poznin and had overflowed its banks decades ago, Iseult reached for her Threadstone. It of course wasn’t there. And neither is the taler.
Her hand stilled, stuck at the base of the heretic’s collar. Then, for the first time since she’d been captured, terror sluiced through her body. She patted and scraped and searched under the collar for the coin, but it wasn’t there. She’d lost it. Somehow, somewhere—it was gone.
This is good, she tried to tell herself. You didn’t want him to follow you anyway, and you were going to leave him at the lodge. This is good. A completion of what you’d tried to initiate with your first plan.
But it didn’t feel good. Iseult felt alone. And she felt small. Very, very small.
“Stasis,” she mouthed to herself. “Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.” She was a Threadwitch by training, and for once, a Threadwitch in magic too, since she could no longer weave.
And as a Threadwitch, Iseult had no need for feelings or for fear.
Logic had gotten her here. Stasis would keep her going.
When the bridge ended, soggy floodplain dusted in fresh snow squelched beneath her feet. High stone walls climbed from the earth ahead, stretching shadows across her. Until she was within the walls and the wind from the plains fell silent.
It was strange to feel stillness again. To hear only the sounds she was meant to hear, untempered by Middle Sister Swallow’s howling.
She examined the city around her; it was different than what she’d seen in the Dreaming, through Esme’s eyes.
More raiders, more tents, more Threads crammed into a city that had died fifty years ago from a plague that might still lurk in the soil and stone and waters trudging by.
Certainly there were Severed Threads here, thick as cobwebs. Everywhere Iseult’s gaze landed, she could detect them, coiling and wriggling. Threads that break, Threads that die.
This close to the final Well, all magic had become poison.
As for Esme’s actual army of Cleaved, Iseult spied none of them. Eron’s intelligence reports had said they still stood here, yet on this particular wide avenue that led uphill with buildings like skeletons left upon a battlefield, there were no signs of her forgotten army.
“This way,” one of the raiders said, veering Iseult toward a copse of trees grasping at the winter sky. A path with occasional flagstones cut through the forest and snow, until a small clearing appeared. Here stood a single domed Nomatsi tent.
Inside, Threads burned with such teal certainty, it was almost hard to look upon them. They were like Evrane’s Threads, bordering on fanaticism. But they were also like Eron fon Hasstrel’s: unrelenting and self-assured.
And swirling at the core was a knotted cluster of grieving Threads. Of pure cobalt and stark navy that were a perfect match for the Threads of a different man from a thousand years ago.
An undercurrent of darkness stirred inside Iseult. She was so close, it would be so easy. So quick. One death to prevent many. I will not falter.
“Stop,” said the raider woman leading Iseult, and she dismounted with the expectation that Iseult should do the same. Moments later, a raider opened the tent flap for Iseult. Heat and orange light poured over her.
Once inside, flaps swimming shut behind her, it took several moments for Iseult’s eyes to adjust. All she saw were the Threads. Forest green determination. Cerulean preparedness. Rose calm.
Blue, blue, devastatingly blue grief.
Until at last, Iseult also saw Ragnor Amalej.
And her resolve didn’t merely falter, it shattered into a thousand pieces.
For here stood a replica of Aeduan, except Aeduan of the future.
Aeduan with Threads and silver-streaked hair, with hazel eyes and thick lashes.
Ragnor was slender like his son, but dressed neatly in a black gambeson and breeches.
Lines fanned out from his mouth, as if he’d smiled often long ago.
The undercurrent inside Iseult became a tidal wave, and suddenly her logic was drowned just as most of Poznin was.
Ragnor stood, his stool sliding over a rug, and with a deliberate, thoughtful frown, he said, “So the dark-giver has finally come to me. Welcome. I do not wish to kill you, but I will if I must.” Then, to Iseult’s shock and discomfort, the Raider King pressed his hands flat to his sides, hinged his torso at the hips, and bowed.
It was a bow like Nomatsis gave to a Threadwitch, meant to show that Iseult had earned the respect of the tribe—and it was the same bow she had taught Caden only days ago.
She swallowed. Then swallowed again, harder, her throat clogging up. No one had ever bowed like this to her, and she had to brace herself against the floods. Stasis! Stasis!
When the Raider King rose again, his gaze leveled past Iseult toward the door. “Admiral,” he called to someone outside, “bring in the food. Our esteemed guest has traveled such a long way, and we must show her proper hospitality.”