Chapter 40
FORTY
It was not the Raider King who came to retrieve Iseult. Instead, it was Admiral Kahina. “Follow me,” she said, her Threads exhausted. Something had unsettled her in the last hour.
“Follow you where?”
Kahina only glared and strode back out of the tent.
Iseult followed. Her hips felt so light without the book or any blades.
Meanwhile the knife in her boot was stiff against her ankle; enough so, she had to adjust her gait.
But Kahina was sunk too deeply in her own thoughts to notice Iseult’s stride.
She had a pipe in her mouth; it glowed and puffed smoke.
Although clouds still hugged the sky—erasing the setting stars and moon—there was a sharpness to the world.
A hardening of edges that hinted at sunrise.
The city had changed since Iseult had been marched in—or rather, Ragnor’s raiders had.
Everywhere Iseult glanced, she found worried, focused Threads. War was coming.
No, war was already here.
At an intersection two blocks from the tent, Kahina crossed onto a wide avenue. Iseult glimpsed a placard on a crumbling building that read City Hall. This was a road on Leopold’s maps and on Ragnor’s. It would lead eventually to the heart of the city and to the Air Well.
Inexplicably, there were no raiders or Threads here.
There was only snow that had turned to ice on ancient cobbles.
Mist trailed off Kahina as they traversed the ancient city, as if the heat of her Paladin soul melted all it touched.
Her Threads pulsed with weariness … and something else—something pinkish and warm.
It was almost the color of friendship, almost the color of family. Except frightened, as if someone she loved was in danger.
Kahina shivered. Her pipe flared. Then once more, mist formed around her head.
“You’re the Paladin of Fire,” Iseult said. She hadn’t meant to speak, but it was much like being next to Leopold. Here stood history. Here stood answers.
The woman’s silvery eyebrows rose. Her posture was stiff and military. “I’m Admiral of the Red Sails,” she countered. “But yes, I also happen to be a Paladin of Fire.” A wider swath of snow and ice melted around her. Then turned to fog.
“You were one of the Six,” Iseult continued. “You knew the Sightwitch Eridysi. And Ragnor, b-before he was the Raider King. You were there when … when the world became chaos.”
Now Kahina’s jaw clenched until her pipestem creaked. “And the world has been chaos ever since. Which is why we’re here. Why you’re here, Dark-Giver. Now, enough talking.”
Ahead, ramparts rose, marking where the oldest parts of the city still clung to a waterlogged earth. Beyond that, Iseult knew the road would curve and eventually take her to the tower were Esme had once dwelled—or, if she went the other way, to the Origin Well.
“Why?” Iseult pressed. The snow still melted and fogged wherever Kahina stepped; it felt like running through sea spray.
“What went wr-wrong a thousand years ago? I’ve only ever read part of Eridysi’s diary, so I only know what happened with the Void Paladin Portia.
She and the other Exalted Ones used their power to enslave the land and rule. But then what?”
Kahina didn’t answer. She walked faster instead, her legs longer than Iseult’s and her body weighed down by fewer layers. A Firewitch, it would seem, didn’t need furs against this cold.
Kahina reached the time-worn ramparts; a gate cut through; she vanished into the shadows, only her hair still visible like a guiding star across the night.
Then they were through the gate and the ancient part of Poznin rose before Iseult.
She had seen this on the maps as well, but the two dimensions of a drawing were nothing compared to the heft and texture of the real thing.
These walls have stood against winds and waters for a thousand years—and so has the woman beside you.
Soon, Iseult could see Esme’s tower, a bent-backed haze in the gradually fading night. She also saw a second person waiting ahead: Ragnor the Raider King. He wore a uniform now, giving him the look of the general he’d been a thousand years ago. Of the tactical genius that Leopold spoke of.
He no longer felt small.
On Ragnor’s uniform was the red moon on the black field. And just as he felt bigger, stronger, the sigil no longer looked gruesome. Instead, it looked like a moon wrapped in Heart-Threads. I am bound to Moon Mother, it seemed to say, and she is bound to me.
“Why have you brought me here?” Iseult asked.
“Why do you think?” His voice was soft. “I want you to see the Origin Well.”
“You could have shown that to me hours ago.”
A smile slid over Ragnor’s lips, though it never reached his eyes. “But then you would not have had time to read what was on my desk.”
Ah. Iseult let a smile of her own come, but it was one of stasis.
One of cold detachment that would have made Gretchya proud.
Especially because inside her brain, everything she’d thought she understood was once more reassembling.
For there was something so chilling in the way Ragnor had said, But then you would not have had time to read what was on my desk.
Of course she’d assumed he wanted her to explore all his maps and missives, but she had also assumed it was to instill her with a false sense of safety. Like someone who coaxes out a cat by holding very still.
Now that Iseult faced Ragnor again, however, she saw he possessed such clarity in his Threads—such certainty of his own correctness and truth—that it made Monk Evrane’s clarity seem fanatically unhinged and Eron fon Hasstrel’s certainty seem naive.
For half a breath, Iseult felt as she did when she sparred with Habim, like she faced a master who was already three moves ahead of her. Like no amount of strategy or wiles could let her win here. And that, she realized with a sickening kink of her intestines, is actually what he wanted me to see.
“Walk with me,” Ragnor commanded.
“Yes,” Iseult agreed.