Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
The river moved too fast. Safi was used to the sea, to streams, and even to sharp, churning rivers—but this stout, glutted python?
She’d thought it would be sluggish. Slowed by winter’s breath across its cold skin.
Instead, the current sped so hard, so fast that no matter how desperately Safi slammed her heels onto the icy shelf along the shoreline, she couldn’t keep pace with the blip of pallor that marked Merik in the water.
And soon, the blip was gone.
It didn’t help that the ice was unpredictable. Some places, it held her weight with sturdy ease. Other places, her foot would smash through and feel the river’s teeth.
Behind Safi, Merik’s advisors ran. Ahead, Aurora darted back and forth, corkscrewing inside her winds.
Every few moments, she would dive into the water, disappear for several agonizing seconds.
Safi’s feet would hammer, a wild gallop next to the three people with her.
The ice would groan. Break. Slide. Slip.
Then Aurora would emerge again, her fur sodden, her wings limp, and her magic over storms waning.
Every dive, she grew weaker.
“Stop,” Safi shrieked after the hound’s fourth attempt. Her voice was reedy and pinched in the frozen air. “Stop or you’ll drown with him!”
A poor choice of words. The word drown sent Aurora yowling back toward the open slit of river.
There was no sign of Merik in there now—at least not from where Safi and the others ran.
He might have sunk to the bottom. He might be trapped somewhere under the ice, right under Safi’s own feet for all she could see.
She needed a plan.
She needed her Threadsister here to help her make one.
At that thought—at the fist into Safi’s brain that reminded her Iseult is missing too—Safi skidded to a slippery, knee-wrenching stop. Her companions stopped beside her, and even Aurora slowed, her winds spinning her backward toward Safi, toward the shore. A plan, a plan, we need a plan.
Merik’s advisors stared at her. They’d all lost their hoods now, and a distant part of Safi’s brain was shocked to see how young two of them were. Round, red-faced children who had suddenly been thrust into the highest-stakes chaos imaginable.
Safi could relate to that.
A plan, a plan, we need a plan. They were all looking at her. Even the storm hound, who’d hauled herself to a whimpering, whining stop on the ice. She dripped water; frost clung to her fur.
“You,” she said to the girl with the rifle.
“Keep your eyes on the city in case raiders come. You,” she told the boy, “try to get the storm hound out of here. She’s a huge target.
And you—Loued, was it? How powerful a Herdwitch are you—” Safi broke off as a new noise wailed.
It drowned her voice like the river drowned Merik.
A howl like Aurora’s … except blasted by a horn.
No, by horns, plural. Many horns, deep, rumbling, and magnified by bloodlust across the rooftops of Poznin.
Safi rounded toward the city, her jaw slackening.
What did those alarms mean? Were they for Merik or something—someone else?
If Safi had to choose between Merik or Iseult, the answer was easy.
It would be Iseult. Always. But gods, how about she get through this without having to choose? That would be so much better.
The two young advisors and Loued stared at the city. Aurora too, her hound body floppy and lost. Until Safi barked: “Move!” Then she grabbed Loued’s shoulder and pushed him onto the ice. “Use your magic! Control a creature in the river and find Merik!”
The man’s exhales were as white as the ice underfoot, and he stared at Safi with bafflement while horns blared on. “Animals, Loued. Herdwitchery. Find Merik.”
This time, the man understood. He nodded. Faster, faster. “Ahtset! Yes!” He stretched out his hands as if he were a weaver at the loom. As if he were Iseult reaching for Threads. His eyes flared green.
Then they flared white as a summer’s day. All of his body, in fact, lit up like a star had ignited from within. Or from above, Safi thought, as she realized all of the ice, all of the shore, all of the forest and the Windswept Plains beyond were brightening with the same unnatural sunshine.
And she knew, before she felt any heat or heard any flames, what she would find when she turned again toward Poznin. Because hadn’t she been here before? Trapped in fire while a ship burned around her. But there was no Empress of Marstok to save her this time. No Vaness made of iron.
Safi twisted, the movement as sluggish as if she were the one held by the river, and there it was: seafire comets lancing across the sky. They aimed toward Last Holdout.
For a brief space between moments, Safi heard the crackle and roar of the conflagration.
Louder than the horns, she heard the hiss and snarl as seafire rocketed across the river.
And although she was a hundred feet or more below the closest comet, she felt its heat on her face, on her eyeballs, in the aether of her soul.
This, she thought, changes everything.
She rounded for the young advisors. “Get back to Last Holdout. Now, now. Flee the forest, take nothing.”
“Rora,” the boy protested. His eyes were wide, the pupils reflecting a forest in flames.
“Leave her.” Safi wagged her head. “She can survive this.” Maybe. “But Last Holdout cannot.”
“What about Merik?” the girl asked, her voice almost lost to the horns. “We can’t leave him. He’s our leader. He’s our king.”
True, true, true. There was so much conviction in her voice, in her spine, that Safi’s whole body sparked from within. A purifying flame to chase away the black seafire.
And in that moment, with all the noise and heat and death crashing down, Safi had a sudden vision of this girl leading armies of her own one day. Armies that will belong to the King of Storm Hounds.
She squeezed the girl’s shoulders. “He will not drown,” Safi promised, trying to match the girl’s conviction. Trying to impart her own truth with each word. “Loued will make sure Merik gets out of this alive. Now you make sure he has people to come home to.”
The girl snapped up her chin, obedience aging her face ten years. “Yes, we will.” She spun away, snagging the boy as she went.
In seconds, they were flying across the ice—comfortable in a way that Safi and Loued were not. As if the two kids had crossed this river before. As if the winds of dawn were coming to their aid, sweeping behind them and gliding them right into the trees.
Safi rounded back to Loued. His eyes were closed, his hands still outstretched. He rocked. His lips moved. And Safi knew without needing to ask that he had found creatures beneath the water.
He would locate Merik. She was certain of it. She just had to make sure no seafire hit him before that happened.
Or can hit Aurora, she realized with a jolt as she lurched around in search of the great beast. But the storm hound was gone. She’d taken flight from the river’s ice and now she was nothing more than a shadow spiraling south across the ever-brightening sky.