Bloodwitch

by Susan Dennard

  The crossbow cranked, a fresh bolt almost loaded. Lizl lunged. Aeduan’s hands shot up.

  He silenced the man’s blood. It took every scrap of strength he had left, and the pain—it scorched through him. But it was enough. Enough for him to grab hold and still the man for one shallow breath. Then two.

  Lizl reached the monk and knocked the crossbow from his grip.

  Then the flames won, and Aeduan lost control.

  The monk instantly tensed, twisting as if to attack—yet in a move too quick to see, Lizl unsheathed her sword. She had it fixed at his neck before he could fully spin around.

  “Why did you do that?” Her voice was pinched and high. “Why did you kill them?”

  “What do you mean?” the monk snarled. “Why did you stop me? We have orders!”

  “From whom?”

  Aeduan leaned in, straining to hear the answers. His heart thundered against his ribs. The shadows wavered, and his magic … He could no longer reach it, no longer sense blood—any blood. Not even the fallen bodies littering the earth around him.

  “From the Monastery, of course.” The monk’s eyes darted between Aeduan and Lizl. “Who are you? If you were not sent to help, then why are you here? Are you part of the insurgency?”

  “Help with what?” Lizl demanded. “What insurgency?” But the monk had no chance to reply before a new voice rang out, “Lower your weapon! We are on the same side.”

  As one, Aeduan and Lizl snapped their gazes to the encampment’s gate. A monk towered behind the girl they had saved, his sword thrust through her back. He yanked it out. The girl spit blood. Then her body slumped among the others.

  Aeduan knew this monk. This was the scent he had recognized—a man who had helped him in Veñaza City, when he’d hunted the Truthwitch. The monk’s pale hair was longer now, and his leg freshly bloodied.

  His sword was bloodier, though.

  One by one, eleven monks joined the pale-haired man. Each carried a blade coated in flesh. After forming a line, they advanced on Aeduan and Lizl. Flecks of organ and excrement hit the earth as they walked. Twenty paces away, the lead monk eased to a stop, and the other eleven monks halted as well.

  “Back away,” the pale monk called. “We fight for the same side.”

  Lizl did not lower her sword. “You killed innocents.”

  “We killed vermin.”

  “They were mothers.” Aeduan’s voice shook, each word in his throat made of fire. He shouted on anyway. “Children.”

  “Who swear fealty to the Raider King.” The monk on the end poked her sword at the nearest corpse, an elderly woman with silver hair and a chest punctured by arrows.

  “Yes,” the leader agreed. “And these people breed more raiders, who swell the Raider King’s ranks. We save thousands of lives by destroying just a few.” At these words, the outermost monks began to move—slowly, cautiously, rounding the edges of their line like wolves circling a lamb.

  Aeduan and Lizl did not move.

  “He,” Lizl dug the tip of her sword into the first monk’s neck, “said that you have orders from the Monastery. Who gave them?”

  “The Abbot, of course.” The lead monk opened his arms, as if welcoming them to a party. As if they were the last to arrive, and he indulged them by inviting them at all. “These orders come directly from Abbot Natan fon Leid himself. You would defy him?”

  Still, the monks inched nearer. Still, Lizl’s sword held true.

  “We are not murderers,” she said, and Aeduan found himself nodding. Found his fingers flexing and readying for a fight.

  One they would lose, but one worth fighting all the same.

  “Whose side are you on?” The lead monk lifted his bloodied sword at Lizl. “You are clearly monks like us. You wear the cloak and the opal and you”—he aimed his sword at Aeduan—“I know. So stand down. Obey your Abbot’s orders. Or admit you are insurgents and face the holy punishment.”

  Aeduan’s eyes met Lizl’s. Hatred burned, and he knew it well. It pulsed inside his weakened veins. It wanted justice, it wanted vengeance, and it wanted blood. He so rarely let this darkness surface. He so rarely looked it in the eye and said, Yes, today you can come out.

  This would mark the fourth time.

  He would kill them all.

  “Now!” barked the lead monk, sword curving high, and in a concerted charge, the Carawens moved.

  But Lizl moved too. In a blur of speed, she slung something at Aeduan. He caught it, looped it over his neck, and the instant the Painstone touched flesh, the night sharpened around him. Blood-scents crashed against his magic, and with them came the power to control.

  Lizl charged. Aeduan charged. The fight began.

  With a single, fluid strike, Lizl killed the first monk. Her sword pierced his throat. In, out. Blood splattered Aeduan as he dove for the loaded crossbow. With his muscles fueled by fresh, painless power, he was unstoppably fast. He grabbed, he aimed, he shot.

  Down went a second monk. A third lunged at Lizl, a fourth at Aeduan. He sidestepped, circling behind. A kick to the knee brought the monk to her knees. Then he grabbed her head and spun. Her neck snapped. He claimed her sword.

  The next five deaths smeared together. Intestines and screams and blood to crush all senses. No emotions, only death. Until Aeduan found himself facing Lizl—and she faced the remaining four.

  The lead monk wore a veneer of rage at the center. His head swung side to side, over and over as he growled, “You should not have done this. You should not have done this.”

  Muscles fueled by magic, Aeduan vaulted at the nearest two monks. His blade sliced down, then up on a diagonal and across. Wide, circular movements that would have been too slow were he not a Bloodwitch.

  But he was a Bloodwitch, and the two monks fell a heartbeat later, ribbons of red streaking the air where they collapsed.

  Aeduan rounded toward the remaining monks—except it was only the leader now, for Lizl had hacked apart the other.

  “You should not have done this,” he repeated. “You should not have done this.”

  Aeduan thrust. The monk parried, a clash of steel. Again, again, Aeduan attacked, and each time the monk defended. A good fighter—Aeduan remembered that from Veñaza City.

  But good fighters did not always make good men.

  Three more swipes, three more parries, and at last Aeduan caught the monk on his wrist. A spin, a yank, and he cut the man’s hand from his arm. Sword and hand hit the earth.

  Aeduan reared back his blade, ready to stab the man through the heart.

  Lizl beat him to it. In a graceful arc that carved through flesh and muscle and spine, she cut off the man’s head.

  It flew several feet through the air before thumping to the soil.

  Then the man’s knees crumpled beneath him, blood gushing, and his headless remains toppled over. One more body to add to the mass grave. One more death to feed the night.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Why did you lie to me?

  I did not.

  You said you sent 5,000 soldiers and sailors to your northern borders. My scouts report over 10,000 are on the way.

  I did not send those forces.

  Someone did.

  And I can guess who.

  * * *

  “Who did this?” Vivia sent her gaze around the room. Fourteen officers from the Royal Navy and Soil-Bound stared stonily back. At her command, they had gathered at a long table in a fortified room at the Sentries of Noden.

  No one had spoken since she had walked in. So she asked her question again: “Who did this? Troops do not move without orders, and I want to know who gave them.”

  A soil-bound general at the table’s opposite end was the first to speak up. “We all did,” she said. “Exactly as we were instructed to do.” She withdrew a crumpled letter from her forest green coat and slid it across the table.

  The iris blue wax had been torn, but even ten paces away, there was no mistaking the royal seal. Vivia extended a hand, lips p
ressed thin while she waited for the officers to hand the letter down to her.

  When at last it reached her, she tore it open. And as expected, her father’s handwriting glared up at her. It was a detailed missive, listing all the specifics he had described to her.

  And it was dated a week ago.

  “I did not give you these orders. I, who still maintain the role of Admiral.” She dropped the page to the table. No slamming, no gales of temper. She was the bear in the forest who did not need to roar; whose sheer size and strength cowed lesser animals. “So explain to me why any of you obeyed.”

  “The King Regent,” a new general began.

  “Is no longer in power,” Vivia finished. “He is no longer Regent, and he has not been Admiral in several months. So tell me why”—she snatched up the paper again and rattled it at them—“did none of you come to me when my father began planning? Why did none of you think to inform me of the messages coming from the watchtowers?” Even as she asked this, Vivia knew what the answer would be.

  They had not informed her because they had not wanted to.

  The armed forces of Nubrevna had followed Serafin Nihar for years. Decades, even. Through war time and truce time, through battle and siege. What was Vivia compared to that?

  I am Queen.

  “Fix this.” Another shake of the letter. “And fix it fast. Call the troops back, mobilize them to defend Lovats, and pray that we are not too late.”

  None of the officers reacted to this command. No Hye, sir! or crisp salutes. No apologies or explanations for why they had so easily, so willingly changed course. In fact, every officer at the table acted as if she had not spoken at all.

  In that moment, Vivia realized it was worse than she’d ever feared. She had been so focused on protecting the city—she had been so intent on doing what she felt was right, on what she knew the infrastructure of the Lovats plateau would demand—that she hadn’t seen this coming. Now, she had a full mutiny on her hands, and her own father had lit the first match.

  Share the glory, share the blame.

  Her confirmation came a heartbeat later, when a Second Admiral, black hair streaked with gray, said, “The vizers came to us an hour ago.” No expression. No inflection. “Vizer Quihar, Eltar, and Quintay. They informed us that your crown has been withdrawn and the King Regent rules once more.”

  “Ah.” It was all Vivia could say. The only sound or breath she could muster. The world had fallen apart around her and now the Hagfishes were dragging her to Hell.

  It mattered none that she had stolen an arsenal of Marstoki weapons for her troops. It mattered none that she had captained a ship of her own and earned the loyalty and love of her crew. It mattered none that she had found the under-city and filled it, and it mattered none that she had been born to her title and the underground lake had chosen her.

  When Serafin Nihar, former King Regent and former Admiral to the Navy and Soil-Bound, had beckoned, these soldiers and three vizers had answered that call.

  “So,” she said quietly. “You will not call back our forces to defend Lovats?”

  Three officers shook their heads. Two said, “No, Your Highness,” and the remaining nine simply regarded her with bored eyes.

  “All right then.” She pushed away from the table. “Just know that when the city of Lovats falls to the Raider King, it will be your guilt to bear—and the Fury never forgets.”

  No one stopped her and no one saluted when she left the room. If her threat—a promise, really—bothered the officers, none gave any indication. But Vivia knew she had spoken the truth.

  Her father might be experienced on the field, he might understand wartime tactics in a way that Vivia would willingly admit she did not. But he did not know her city. He did not know the people crowded into the streets. He had never walked the Skulks or served the hungry at Pin’s Keep. He had never ridden the waves of the Cisterns, or explored the under-city.

  He was a transplant from Nihar who had married into power. Who stole speeches and titles and glory that were not his, and the right to rule did not live inside his veins.

  Yet despite all that, it had taken only a few words to three vizers and a few words to the armed forces. Between one ring of the chimes and the next, all of Vivia’s power—all of her plans and careful protections—had been yanked out from beneath her.

  She should have seen it coming.

  She hadn’t, though. Not in the least.

  All these years, her father had said he only wanted what was best for her, that he only cared for her sake. And all these years, she had believed him.

  When she reached her boat several minutes later, her guards tried to join her. She waved them off. Then she boarded her boat, summoned her tides, and pushed off into the Waterwitched currents that led to the southern water-bridge.

  She no longer felt attached to her body. No longer attached to dry land. It was not the officers who would drown—it was her. She was already drowning. Already sinking beneath the waves, watching the sunlight vanish, until soon, there would be nothing left but Noden’s Hagfishes and a final lungful of air.

  She’d done it all wrong. She had been too much like her mother, exactly as the High Council had feared. The queen by blood, they had said about her mother, but with madness in her head. They had wanted Vivia to be like Serafin, for whom command had come as easily as breath. They had wanted bluster and confidence and a rage to bend their enemies.

  Vivia supposed it only made sense that the Royal Navy and Soil-Bound officers had wanted that too. Even after she had laid out the truth of the city’s infrastructure before them, even after she had spent hours forming a detailed strategy for protecting Lovats and slowing the Raider King—even after that, a single barked command from the King Regent had sent them all snapping into line.

  At some point, Vivia did not know when, tears began to fall. Hot, angry tracks that propelled her Tidewitchery faster, faster. Wind crashed against her. She dipped around ships, she swayed around ferries, she veered, she skipped, and she rode waves of her own creation.

  It wasn’t fast enough, though. Never fast enough. She could not outsail this shame at her heels nor the rage that she had bungled her rule so badly. It was not a pretend rage either, worn to win her father’s approval, nor even a berserking Nihar rage that her father’s family had always been so proud of.

  This was a true, heart-shattering, tide-ripping rage. All directed inward, at the truth now laid bare before her: she was not fit to rule. She would never be the one thing she’d fought so hard to be.

  She wondered if this was how her mother had felt before she’d jumped.

  There was the spot, just ahead. A strip of unassuming stone on the water-bridge where her mother had finally decided the shadows were too much. That only in death could she understand life, and that Noden’s court would be an easier solution than the weight of dark life spanning before her.

  For thirteen years, Vivia had never looked at this spot when she sailed past. She had always fixed her gaze on the barn swallows, dancing and happy and free.

  Today, she looked. Today, she slowed her skiff and stared at the gray stone, cloud-dappled and rough, while two swallows swooped past.

  All this time, Vivia had feared that if she looked at this place, that if she did not turn the other way, then she would find her own feet moving toward it. That the shadows inside her would win, and the High Council—and everyone else too—would be right: she had too much madness inside her head to ever be Queen.

  As a child she had tried to blame Merik for what Jana had done. Somehow, if it was Merik’s fault, then it could not be Vivia’s. And then the same fate could not befall her. The bludgeoning in her chest would not win.

  She regretted what she’d said to him, but never had she regretted it more than right now. With the breeze caressing her face, with the water lapping and kind. For she felt no urge to follow her mother off the edge. She felt only the hollow grief she had always worn, and nothing—neither Noden nor time—
could take that away.

  It had not been Merik’s fault their mother had jumped. Nor had it been Vivia’s own doing. Jana had died because she had seen no other escape, and there had been no one there who knew how to help her.

  All these years, Vivia had thought that she needed to be stronger than her mother, that she needed to fight the darkness to wear the crown. But that was wrong; that was her father speaking.

  Jana had been strong—stronger than Serafin. Stronger than anyone realized, for she had lived with shadows every day and still ruled, still guided, still loved. Rather than nurture that strength, though, Serafin had nurtured the shadows. He had undermined and manipulated, just as he undermined and manipulated Vivia now.

  For hye, Vivia had shadows inside her too, but they were not like Jana’s. These were all her own, as unique as the foxfire arrangements that glowed beneath the city. And twenty-three years of living with them had made Vivia stronger than anyone realized.

  Stronger than Serafin realized.

  Only two weeks ago, he had promised, Be the queen they need and soon a true crown will follow. But now Vivia saw he’d never meant those words. He had betrayed her. He had gone behind her back and stolen the power she had worked so hard to earn and worked so hard to use with wisdom and compassion.

  Yet she did not need a crown to protect Nubrevna from the Raider King. She could be the queen they needed, with or without one. Just as she could be the queen they needed, even if madness thrummed in her veins—or perhaps because madness thrummed in her veins.

  No more backstabbing and mind games, no more seeking approval from people who thought her unqualified or unhinged. No more tiptoeing around a room because women oughtn’t to run, to shout, to rule.

  And above all: no more regrets.

  Vivia was ready to be Queen.

  FORTY

  Merik awoke in the night to Esme’s voice. She spoke to someone he could not see, and twice, he thought he heard Iseult, where are you? I cannot find you. Iseult?

  But it might have been a dream. Waking and nightmare—there was no separating the two. Dancing skeletons and moonlight on a magic pool. Armies of shadow and knives through the heart. They all smeared together on a canvas.