Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
Iseult felt it when the lightning struck Safi. But just as Safi’s Threads kept Iseult from fading into death, now it was Aeduan’s Threads that kept Safi moored.
Iseult felt him through her bond with Safi.
She felt his magic pushing through her Threadsister’s veins.
And when Safi’s strength grew, regained, swelled, Iseult grew stronger too.
More tangible, more real. Her steps through the Dreaming felt sure, and she knew as she stared down at her bloodied body and lips that had turned blue, that she could crawl back inside.
That she had enough life, for now, to return her body into being.
It wouldn’t last long. Not without a way to heal that hole in her abdomen, the muscles and organs past repair.
Iseult crouched beside her body, ready to slide down into it and haul herself inch by ruptured inch toward the Origin Well.
Its waters might be dead, unable to heal or help or finish the building process that the Threads in that broken glass had begun, but it needed only the Cahr Awen to restore it.
Iseult was one half; maybe her shadows and darkness could offer something for the Well, even if the Well could do nothing for her in return.
But that was when three things happened, spread apart like heartbeats. First: Leopold finally saw his moment and struck. His rapier cut into Ragnor’s face, directly into an eyeball, and though it was sloppy and desperate, it was also deadly.
Second: the Raider King fell, his Threads so blue, so bereft, so despairing. And he murmured a single word into the rising dawn.
Ignite.
It gusted across the Well and snow and dawn. It resonated against Iseult’s Dreaming ears, then it kept going. Out past the hill and down the avenue into Poznin, where it reached its mark. Firepots sparked to life beside barrels of seafire.
And the third thing happened: Iseult’s soul returned to her body.
There was no way forward. Every alley, every avenue was filled with shadowy flame.
The heat was incredible, and the speed—the speed at which the city burned.
Safi had never seen anything like it. When she’d been on the Empress of Marstok’s ship, it had also happened quickly.
A single eruption, and only Vaness’s magic to protect her and Safi both.
But now, it was hundreds of such explosions. More seafire than Safi had known could consume the earth. And because of it, she and Aeduan were losing ground. Moving away from the Well instead of toward it.
Threads blurred with the seafire. Too many colors to track or comprehend. Too much smoke. Too much death. Safi wanted Iseult’s magic to go away now; she wanted the Cahr Awen to stop too, with their screaming and jostling: So close! Do not stop!
I’m not, she wanted to scream back. Knifey won’t let me! And it was true. Although Aeduan no longer applied the harsh, almost chain-like control he’d used when he’d first revived Safi, he kept her moving. Kept her focused, like a hand on unsteady terrain.
Never would Safi have imagined that she and the Bloodwitch who’d first hunted her—first prompted her to flee Venaza City—would be so tightly bound. She still didn’t like him very much, but at least she had no doubt where his loyalty lay.
He was a Carawen monk. He was her Threadsister’s Heart-Thread. And he was the Knife, a card that added strength to any taro hand—or took it away as needed.
The other Carawens still fought around Safi and Aeduan, warding off raiders who dared come this way. The biggest enemy now was the unstoppable flames.
As Safi and Aeduan wheeled onto another street, a sight lifted before them: the Cleaved. Tens of them stacked in frayed rows with Threads black and wriggling.
“Stop,” Safi said, and Aeduan obeyed. His witchery slowed her heart, his hand gripped her tightly, reining her in. And she realized with razored frustration that she was not actually moving as much on her own as she’d believed. That really, only Aeduan’s power and momentum had carried her this far.
The lightning had cooked her organs and baked her bones.
“This is useless,” she said. “I have no idea where we are or how to get—”
“I can get you through!” A small figure hopped up beside Safi. She wore Baedyed garb with a headscarf pulled low. Her face was streaked with black. “I can get you to the Well. That’s what you want, right? That’s what the other one told me. Your friend.”
Safi had no idea who this girl was or where she’d come from. One moment, Safi was next to a smoke-shrouded Cleaved; the next she was staring at this girl.
“You’ve seen Iseult?” Safi asked.
“Before all this, yeah.” The girl waved at the smoke choking the sky. “She said you’d need to get to the Well, and I know a way to get you there. She gave me a map, and I know where they put the seafire barrels. There’s one place they didn’t reach. But getting there will be … hot.”
“You’re from Last Holdout.” Safi recognized the girl now, even if they’d never spoken. “Sky?”
The girl nodded, and Safi looked at Aeduan. “She’s telling the truth.”
“S’more raiders coming, though,” the girl continued. “They’ll follow us to the Well.”
“No,” Aeduan said flatly. “They won’t.” Then he turned and shouted, “Lizl!” A monk, strong and swaggering, appeared from the clot of white cloaks and focused Threads. She had blood streaked across her cloak and authority in her bearing.
“It’s Abbot Thewan to you,” she barked, and to Safi’s shock, humor warmed the woman’s Threads. As if the world around her weren’t collapsing. As if she and Aeduan had just met on the street, and oh, what a coincidence to see you here!
It wasn’t at all what Safi had expected when she’d heard Eron and Evrane mention the Carawens’ new abbot.
In fact, Safi would bet she and Lizl would get along swimmingly if they were anywhere but here.
Yet now, that woman was going to blockade the road, and in all likelihood, she would die.
One more person on Safi’s conscience. One more sacrifice to heal the final Well.
Aeduan lowered his fire-flap to murmur something Safi couldn’t hear. Then that was it. The woman reached for the opal at her ear, bowed low at Safi, and shouted, “We hold this line!”
No, Safi wanted to say. Don’t do that. But Aeduan came to her elbow, his magic cranked into her, and his witchery once more claimed control. “Go,” he ordered Safi. Then again to Sky: “Go.”
The young woman went. Fast as a rat in the sewers, she set off, and Safi and Aeduan chased after her. Around the Cleaved and into alleys, all while the seafire burned.
“Through here!” Sky shoved into a building where the door had long since rotted off the hinges and the windows had collapsed into holes. “There’s a door in the back!” She vaulted easily over broken floorboards and collapsed walls, familiar with the space even as smoke rolled across it.
Safi’s eyes streamed tears. She could hardly see, and she certainly couldn’t breathe. But Aeduan had her, and the Bloodwitch didn’t let go. So onward, they followed Sky.
Until smoke erupted. A volcano of heat so thick it knocked Safi into a nearby wall. Then the seafire itself clawed into the building. Aeduan towed her back the way they’d come, but the seafire easily followed. Nothing in its path was an obstacle; everything it touched became fuel.
They toppled onto the street. Sky was gone. Safi saw no sign of her scrappy figure or Threads, and now this building and all the buildings near it burned.
Safi clutched at her hair. Half of it seemed to be missing. Half of her sleeping gown too. This couldn’t be the end, though. This couldn’t be all that was left for her and Aeduan.
He slid in front of her, and gently, he lowered her hands from her hair. Gently, he gripped her biceps. His blue, blue eyes bored into her. “Do you trust me, Truthwitch?”
“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. True, true, true. “I trust you, Bloodwitch.”
“Then brace yourself, for you are about to feel great pain.”