Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
It was a Firewitch who came into Ragnor’s tent, and her Threads were like Owl’s, like Leopold’s, like the ancient creatures of the Witchlands who did not simply possess elemental powers but were created from them.
A Paladin, Iseult recognized, and this one held a quiet, imposing power with her dark skin and gray hair pulled into a loose bun. With her salt-roughened red coat that somehow made her look more commanding because of its worn edges and occasional rips.
She gave Iseult a smile that wasn’t unkind so much as amused, her Threads shivering with subtle laughter.
Like this whole thing was a joke, and she couldn’t wait for the punchline.
She also carried a bowl of steaming stew, and if she minded the drudgery of the task, she showed no sign.
She simply set the bowl on a lone desk beside a lone cot, then left again with a sailor’s rolling stride.
It was only as the Paladin slipped through the tent flap and torches outside flickered light across her hands, that Iseult noticed something on her thumb: a jade ring.
Suddenly, Iseult knew exactly who this woman was. Admiral Kahina, leader of the Red Sails. She had controlled the fates of Safi and many Hell-Bards in Saldonica, and she only let them safely escape the Pirate Republic once Safi had agreed to a deal.
Anything I want, I will one day collect from you.
Safi had a scar around her thumb to mark that bargain.
How such a woman had come to have a ring or lead the Red Sails, Iseult couldn’t possibly guess. But she also knew better than to underestimate anyone with a witchery as powerful as a Paladin’s.
“You may have my tent for a time,” Ragnor said once Iseult returned her attention to him.
“I have work in the city that will take many hours. You should rest, if you can. The linens”—he waved to his cot—“are fresh, if you wish to sleep.” He moved to pass Iseult, his Threads alighting with new focus for whatever task lay ahead.
And in the brief span of two seconds, Iseult had enough time, enough nearness, to kill him. She could reach for the sword at his hip and stab him.
Instead, she faltered. Instead, she failed and only said: “W-wait.”
Ragnor paused, ten paces away. Iseult could still make a move, if she was quick. If she was quiet.
Still, she did not. “It isn’t plague,” she told him.
The Raider King frowned.
“You’ve sent raiders out to kill people with black lines on their body—but it’s n-not plague. They’re cleaving.”
The Raider King blinked a slow acknowledgment, a gesture Iseult had seen Aeduan make countless times. “Yes,” Ragnor replied, the word carefully uttered in Nomatsi. Then: “That is what the plague always was, Iseult det Midenzi. This city has been poisoned for as long as the Well has been dead.”
Iseult’s posture wavered. “But then, if the plague is caused by dead Wells—why do you want to cleave all the Wells? That will only spread the poison farther.”
“Will it, though?” Ragnor’s question was not harsh, so much as impatient.
“There is much for us to discuss and share, but I cannot do so now. I promise, however, that all your questions will be answered—and I think you will then see that we are not enemies in this fight. We are simply tools who refuse to be discarded.” With those words, he finished his march from the tent.
The flap swung shut, sealing out winter and Threads and the noises of life beyond.
Iseult’s body felt separated from her mind.
Her Threads, if she could have seen them, felt as if they were somewhere three feet to the right.
She had already faltered; she had already lost. Why didn’t you kill him? Aeduan will die. Safi will die.
“S-stasis,” she gnashed out, prying so tightly at the heretic’s collar her nails dug into wood.
Cold, smooth, imprisoning. “You know why you are here. You know what you must do.” The Raider King and his Firewitch Paladin were moving beyond her magical range, but four people stood guard outside the tent.
Another fifteen people patrolled just beyond, each with the disciplined, united Threads of soldiers bound in duty.
Why didn’t you kill him? Why did you falter?
She forced her hands to release the collar and her arms to return to her sides. Then with feet she barely felt on the amber rug, she made herself spin and examine the tent.
The cot had linens and a wool blanket fine enough to have come from the imperial hunting lodge. A brazier coughed meager smoke toward a gap in the tent’s ceiling. No wind stole the smoke, only the natural force of warm air grasping for cool.
On the Raider King’s desk, her stew waited beside letters and maps and drawings and ledgers. A compact version of Eron fon Hasstrel’s table in the dining room—and all of it just sitting there. Right where Iseult could read anything, could destroy anything if she wanted to.
The Raider King is not a man to be trifled with. He is the greatest strategic mind of the last millennium.
Yes. Iseult believed that now, having seen the numbers that had swelled this city into a bloated corpse.
And also having seen how easily Ragnor deflected her attempts to speak.
Surely he knew why she had surrendered. Surely he sensed she had come here to kill him.
Yet he had “opened” his house to her, then walked away.
She looked down. The collar blocked her view of her feet, but she didn’t need to see her toes to know she’d found stasis.
In four long steps, she carried herself to Ragnor’s desk.
Here was a map of all his forces, laid out exactly as she’d found them on her ride into the city.
But now she could count exact numbers, study exact placements.
Either Ragnor had left all of this out for her because he wanted her to trust him … or this was a trap Iseult couldn’t yet see. It didn’t matter which. If he wanted her to study it, then study it she would. Evaluate your opponent, analyze your terrain.
She sat on the Raider King’s stool, a humble throne of creaking pine. Then she withdrew the book still inside her satchel—the one Leopold had left for her, filled with what he’d thought would be the Raider King’s strategies and plans.
“Let’s see how accurate you were, Leopold.”
Iseult got to work.
Safi had no idea how much time had passed when she awoke again. All she knew was that the room felt smaller, darker. There was only the one lantern, still burning, which cast an orange glow over the odd wooden room.
“You’re awake.”
Safi twisted, swallowing at a mouth that was too dry. And there he was: Merik Nihar, hunched on a stool and staring at her as if she were the ghost instead of he.
“Am … I dreaming?” she rasped.
“Not a very good one, if you are.” He smiled, but it was a pained thing that pulled at the burn scars all along the side of his face. “We haven’t found your Threadsister or the Carawen monk. But my people are still searching.”
“Your people,” she tried to say, but all that came out was coughing. Vicious rattles that sounded as bad as they felt, churning up from her abdomen.
Merik moved close, slipping a hand behind her. He helped her sit with a familiar strength. A water bag reached her lips several moments later, and she gulped it back greedily.
Never had water tasted so good.
“Not too much,” Merik murmured, stealing the water away. “I’m under orders to hydrate you slowly.” He set the bag on a second stool beside her bed—although bed was an exaggeration. It was more like a stack of thick furs and rugs.
There was a child’s tale Mathew had once told Safi, about a mouse living at the base of a tree.
That was what she felt now—like that mouse.
Because everything in this room was mystical and storylike, from the rushes on the floor to the crude chest beside the door hung with furs …
And most of all, to the scarred prince seated on a stool beside her.
Here he was ruling over a settlement that had clearly not been assembled by hands, but rather by magic, while people of mismatched backgrounds obeyed him as if they’d known him forever and would follow him through hell-fires.
She leveled a gaze onto his face. He was so much thinner now.
Gaunt, even. Yet strangely, illogically, it suited him.
Now he looked less like a boy and more like a man wizened by a world that had fallen apart around him.
His eyes had always held a weight in them—the weight of a crown, the weight of people depending on him—but now they held wisdom too.
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
“And I thought you were dead.”
“I’m close enough to it.” She tried for a smile, but she felt it failing her. Frizzing with falseness across her face.
“As am I,” he answered. True, true, true. “But you will survive your wound, Safiya fon Hasstrel, thanks to our Baedyed healer. She was able to repair the muscles in your arm. However…” A pause. A swallow. “There will be scars on the skin.”
Safi lifted a single eyebrow. “Scars do not bother me, Prince.”
“I see.”
It was like watching a storm clear at sea. For the first time since she’d awoken, Merik seemed to settle beside her. The waves that tormented him softened toward calm.
“How are you here?” The question emerged from Safi’s throat like a breeze.
“It’s a long tale, Domna.”
“And I have time for listening.”
Merik hesitated, and for half a moment, Safi thought she saw a bit of the boy he’d once been. An uncertain boy, afraid to make the wrong move with so many people watching.
“Please,” Safi pressed. “The last time I saw you, we were both inside a mountain. I need to understand where I am. How you’re here. Who these people are that are out there searching for Iseult.”
“Still as impatient as ever,” Merik murmured, and a real smile towed at his lips.
“And you’re still as stubborn.”
His smile turned sad. “I hope not.” He shook his head, wiped a hand across his face, and finally straightened upon his stool. “It started when assassins came in the night to the Jana. I thought my sister had sent them, and so I traveled to Lovats to confront her…”