Bloodwitch

by Susan Dennard

  Iseult’s lungs shrieked. She wanted air. She wanted light. She wanted life. But here, in the shadows of the Well, she wanted Aeduan more.

  Two more kicks, and her fingers sensed bubbling water. Then her fingers touched rock. The source of water, the source of magic.

  Power washed over her. A light flared. Blinding in its brightness, and the waters surged against her. Deafening in their strength, they thrust Iseult back toward the night.

  Yet in that moment, as Iseult held fast to Aeduan, as she squinted against the brightness and willed his eyes to open, she saw red. Scarlet and true and spooling around them.

  Red that was not blood. Red Threads that led from her heart and ended inside of his.

  Impossible, she thought.

  Then Iseult’s air ended. The world went dark.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Never had Pin’s Keep been so quiet. Never had Vivia felt so many eyes upon her inside these stone walls. This was her haven. This was her den, and this moment was worse than the opening of the under-city. Now she had to lead. Now, pretty speeches wouldn’t be enough.

  She stood at the front of the main space, atop a footstool so she could scan and assess. Count and quantify. Before her stood soldiers, sailors, guards, and anyone who was willing to defend Lovats and defy Serafin Nihar.

  There weren’t many of them. Three hundred, Vivia estimated, and they were woefully underarmed and underarmored. She still had time, though, to find more fighters and equip them as best she could. The Royal Navy and Soil-Bound forces her father had sent north would slow the Raider King, even if Vivia did not believe they could stop him.

  Noden curse her, she’d thought her list of tasks long yesterday. Now it ran for two pages, scribbled quickly onto a paper taken from her office overhead, and as she scanned the main room, she continued scrawling more. No real order to the list; simply what came to her as she assessed readiness. Whetstones. Fletching. Lanolin. Boots. Painstones. Gauze. On and on and on.

  Once she had finished her furious writing, she stepped off the stool to hand the list to Vizer Sotar’s head guard, an older woman with a sharp chin and sharper eyes.

  Except before she could touch down, the earth jolted. A hard heaving that shuddered through the Keep, through Vivia’s knees. Her arms windmilled. She fell toward the shaking wall—and a second judder hit. Then a third and fourth, closer together until everything simply shook.

  Then as fast as the quake had come, it quelled. A slow dissolution of movement that eventually ended in calm. Not without damage, though. Already, Vivia heard shouts from the Skulks. Shouts from the cellar of Pin’s Keep.

  And for half a breath, all Vivia wanted to do was scream. Did she not have enough to do? Had Noden and his Hagfishes not already dragged her people far enough beneath the waves?

  Then Vizer Sotar’s head guard was there, helping Vivia to rise. Dust coated the woman’s face. The whole room had clouded to gray. “The under-city,” Vivia said. “We must check the under-city.” She did not wait for an acknowledgment before turning toward the next person within reach—Vizer Sotar himself. “The streets,” she barked at him. “Get people into the city to check for damage—”

  “Sir!” A voice slashed through the room, high-pitched and strained. Then louder, “SIR.”

  Vivia turned, terrified by what such urgent shouts might mean. Terrified what damage this person would report to her. What she found, though, was a boy staggering her way. Familiar and young with dark eyes bulging and dappled brown skin flushed to russet.

  She knew him … She knew him, but Noden save her, she couldn’t recall from where.

  “Sir,” the boy repeated once, stumbling right up to Vivia. He was covered in white dust, as if he’d just come from the underground mid-quake—and he was unconcerned by the guards moving to stop him.

  “Sir,” he said once more, and this time, he doubled over.

  Vivia lurched forward and caught him before he could collapse. His skin was damp and chalky.

  “First … Mate,” he panted, dragging up his gaze to meet Vivia’s. Even his lashes were thick with dust. “I mean, Captain Sotar … sent me.”

  Stix. Vivia’s breath hitched. Cold doused her. “What is it? Where is Stix?”

  But the boy only shook his head, a desperate movement. “It’s the … the raiders, sir.” He coughed, one hand clutching tighter and tighter onto Vivia’s arm.

  And distantly, she realized the whole room had fallen silent again. It was as still as the open sea before a storm.

  “The raiders … are coming,” the boy finished at last.

  “I know,” Vivia tried to say, but the boy shook his head harder.

  “And they’re coming through the under-city. Soon, sir. So you gotta … you gotta empty it. And then you gotta defend … the door.”

  Now it was Vivia’s turn to shake her head. The boy made no sense. Where had he even come from? “What door?” she asked. “And where is Stix?”

  “The door,” the boy insisted, voice pitching higher. “Underground, sir. I’ll … I’ll show you.” He pulled away, already rising and turning, as if to race for the cellar.

  And that was when Vivia noticed the bloodied bandage on the boy’s left hand. That was why she knew him. He had been with Merik in the under-city. Cam, Merik had called the boy—though Vivia had foolishly mistaken him for a girl two weeks ago.

  Yet that didn’t explain how Cam had ended up with Stix. Nor where Stix was now—nor what any of what the boy was saying actually meant.

  Before she could press him or even stand to follow, he added, voice low and private, “I was supposed to tell you somethin’ else, sir. Something to make you believe Captain Sotar really sent me and that raiders are really coming. She said, ‘Noden and the Hagfishes ought to bend to a woman’s rule.’”

  At those words, a dullness settled over Vivia. An icy, seeping weight that numbed her limbs and brain. So this is what drowning feels like, she thought, and now she knew that she’d reached the last of the sunlight, the last of her air.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Merik’s body was pummeled, his mind stretched long, his magic shrunk down to a pinprick yet somehow inflated to enormity at the same time.

  Then he returned to himself and burst into a new world. Underwater, dark and cold. No chance to summon winds here, only swimming, aiming for a surface he hoped he would find.

  Four kicks became ten before his head finally broke free. He gasped and spluttered, spinning around to search for the Northman in this dim world lit only by blue light off the door.

  Water swept against Merik’s legs, and three rough breaths later, the Northman splashed up beside him.

  “Where?” the Northman coughed.

  “I do not know,” Merik replied, and it was mostly true. Hye, he knew he was inside of a mountain with magic doorways that somehow connected to the mythological Sightwitch Sister Convent. But this explanation was far beyond his ability to articulate in Svodish.

  Hell-waters, it was beyond his ability to articulate in Nubrevnan.

  In fact, his mind couldn’t seem to pin down the layers of it all. He might have heard about it from Esme and the Fury, but he had not truly believed such a thing existed until right now, when he was actually there.

  And even right now, with a blue door glowing at the bottom of a pool, he still wasn’t sure he believed it. But as Evrane used to say, The shark will eat you whether you acknowledge it or not. And if Merik were facing a shark right now, his aim would be trying to escape it.

  No Cleaved might be coming through the door yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. And there was still the issue of the Fury and the Raider King finding these doors soon.

  Merik swam toward a hazy ledge five strokes away. After hauling himself out, he pulled the Northman up beside him. Already, he shook from the cold and the Northman’s furs dripped and splattered—but that was a remote distraction. What mattered was what lay beyond: a cavern, large enough to hold the city of Lovats.

  It w
as large enough to hold the entire plateau actually, and somehow this basin of water was nothing more than a shelf hugging the cavern wall. Merik inched closer to the edge, peered down …

  And for the first time in his life, vertigo engulfed him.

  Ever since his witchery had awoken in him as a child, heights had never bothered him. But this was no mere drop-off. This was staring into another universe. Into the very heart of Noden’s court.

  Merik sucked in a long, girding breath before pulling his gaze back up—and then up and up and up. Lights flickered across the cave, as well as other blue glows. And then, high at the top of it all, was a stretch of ice, almost like a bridge.

  “Up,” Merik said, pointing toward the nearest ledge. One of the other blue glows had to be the door Merik needed to reach Lovats, and the only option before him was to try every one and see where they took him—and then, of course, pray to Noden that it didn’t eject him somewhere worse than Poznin with the Puppeteer.

  At the Northman’s nod, Merik closed his eyes and called his magic to him.

  He expected resistance. Underground, there was little air and no winds. And underground, there could be dangerous consequences if one tried to manipulate the air too much. Air currents led to storms, and storms in small spaces were never good.

  Merik’s winds came easily, though. A huge rush that punched into him and the Northman. They both toppled backward, but before they could fall into the water, Merik swirled his winds behind them. Beneath them.

  Power, power, power.

  Merik and the Northman flew. It was as natural as breathing—Merik couldn’t believe how easily the power came to him. And it wasn’t the Fury’s magic channeling over their bond either. Those winds were cold and vengeful. These winds sparkled.

  It was the only word he could find to describe the feeling. This sense that the glimmering galaxy below somehow fed his lungs and carried him faster, higher, stronger than he had ever managed on his own.

  They reached the first ledge, where a second blue door glowed. It was identical to what he’d seen submerged in Poznin. “Wait,” he told the Northman, and he moved toward it.

  But the Northman did not like that command. He shook his head and hurried after Merik. Two bracing breaths for each of them. Then together they stepped through, and like before, Merik felt compressed and elongated, paused yet pushed along. Then he and the Northman were out the other side.

  Wind and night kicked against them. Pine trees shivered. Merik’s eardrums instantly swelled, as if he’d flown too high too fast, and a full moon shone down.

  This was not Nubrevna. Merik gripped the Northman’s forearm and hauled the man back through the magic door.

  Crush, stretch, stop, and move. They stumbled onto the ledge they’d just left, both men panting. “Cold,” the Northman said, and Merik could only nod. He motioned up. Then once more, his winds twined beneath them and carried them high.

  The next door, on a ledge scarcely large enough to hold them both, ejected them into a ditch. A narrow slope cutting upward toward a crack in the earth, and the scent of cedar and stale smoke hit his nose.

  This was not the Lovats under-city either.

  Back into the cavern they moved, and on to the next ledge, the next door. This ledge, next to the cavern’s falls, was slick with water. The Northman slipped; Merik’s winds caught him—but not gracefully. He shoved the man through the glowing blue …

  And once again, cold snapped against them. This time, though, there was no wind. An icy staircase ascended before them, and Merik and the Northman quickly skipped up. All they found, though, was a vast, flat expanse of nothing. Moonlit and white. Shimmering and lifeless.

  “Sleeping Lands,” the Northman said, and there was fear in his eyes as he backed down the stairs. “Death,” he warned. “Death.” Then the Northman rushed back through the magic doorway.

  Merik hurried after. He had heard of the Sleeping Lands—of course he had. It was an uncrossable frozen wasteland that sucked in unprepared travelers. Only the Nomatsis … the No’Amatsis, rather, had ever managed to cross it.

  Once more, the door’s magic pummeled against Merik. This time, though, when he toppled through and landed inside the cavern beyond, something was wrong. When he inhaled and called his winds, they came—and they came strong. With power, power, power for the taking.

  But there was cold slithering beneath them. Icy rage that Merik recognized in an instant.

  “We must hurry,” Merik said. Nubrevnan words useless to the Northman, but all he could manage. In a burst of strength and momentum, Merik flew them to the next door, this one tucked at the end of the cavern.

  This door did not glow, and when he stepped inside, no magic battered against him. He saw only shadows. Next door, next door—they had to reach the next door before the Fury came. Before the Fury could lead the Raider King here. And this doorway was near, connected to the current ledge by stairs.

  But the mountain shook. So hard, it flung Merik to the ground. So hard, it flung the Northman off the ledge.

  Merik threw out his winds, catching the Northman and ripping him back to solid ground—solid ground that still quaked. Rubble fell. Dust plumed. And as Merik and the Northman stood there, gripping each other and waiting for the tremor to slow, cold twined into Merik’s lungs. It plucked at his breath.

  Power, power, power.

  Then came the darkness, undulating and frozen. It rippled around Merik and the Northman, and both men wrenched toward the doorway they’d just abandoned. Dust clouded its dark gullet now.

  A figure formed.

  “Why do I hold a razor in one hand?” he asked. “So men remember I am sharp as any edge. And why do I hold broken glass in the other? So men remember that I am always watching.”

  The Fury stepped from the shadows. Cold billowed off him in vast, violent waves. He was his namesake; he was fury through and through.

  His blackened eyes met Merik’s. “Where are they, Merik?” he asked. “What have you done with my blade and my glass?”

  The Fury attacked.

  FIFTY-THREE

  A rush of scalding air hit the boat as Vaness sailed Safi and the Hell-Bards onto Lake Scarza—and as she sailed them into a battle only the Hell-Bards could see.

  The heat swept Safi’s hair from her face, stung her cheeks with invisible embers she couldn’t spot, and set her lungs to choking. All while the boat dipped and shuddered, guided by Vaness’s magic, which was guided by Caden sitting at the helm.

  They aimed for shore.

  Not fast enough, though. Not before the explosion ripped loose through the Floating Palace. A sudden visceral surge that battered into Safi. She heard nothing else, she felt nothing else. The firestorm ripped against her, lived inside her, and breathed with her dry lungs.

  Then the glamour fell. Just a flash like before, but enough for Safi to see the full extent of the battlefield.

  A ship splintered in half burned just ahead, great plumes of smoke given to the sky. Blood stained the water. Sailors clung to debris. Charred corpses floated by.

  Habim had always said war was senseless, yet he had caused so, so much senseless horror here. This was what Uncle Eron’s scheme had done, and it was not peace in the Witchlands.

  Vaness’s bandage was soaked through now, turning the red crepe to almost black while more blood oozed from her nose.

  Then the glamour winked back into place, and false peace shrouded Safi’s vision once more.

  “Right!” Caden roared. The boat veered right. “Sharper!”

  “Oh gods, sharper!” screeched Lev.

  And Vaness’s hands wrenched sharper. So hard, they almost flipped. But Zander clung to Vaness, and Lev clung to Zander—all while Caden and Safi simply clung to the boat. Ash flew into Safi’s mouth. Her eyes burned with unseen smoke.

  Then the boat heaved back the other way, and so the other way they all flew. Back, forth, back, forth. On and on, side to side while Caden shouted directions and Vaness obeyed. />
  Three more times, the glamour fell, and three more times, Safi saw wreckage and death and blood smearing from the Empress’s nose. Then they left the glamour behind entirely. Between one breath and the next, Safi could see again. The Empress could see again—and abruptly, she sat taller.

  The boat hurtled faster, sheering atop the waves. The lake crawled with ships fleeing the glamoured battle behind, but Vaness swerved and skipped and carried them ever onward.

  Until quite suddenly, there was nowhere left to go. They were almost to shore, the quay zooming in fast. Vaness did not slow, though. If anything, she pushed the boat harder. Even when Caden roared for her to stop and Lev screamed, “You’re going to kill us!”

  Vaness only flung her arms higher and aimed straight for the road, where thousands of people poured by. Blood streaked off her face. It hit Safi’s cheeks—not that Safi cared. All she saw was death propelling toward her, made of stone and bodies and pain.

  Now Zander was shouting too and Safi also joined in, but still Vaness did not listen.

  They reached the stone lip onto shore.

  The boat lifted from the lake, water spraying and people screaming. Then the boat landed, a crash that shocked through Safi’s bones.

  For several resounding seconds, everyone sat there in gaping shock. Not just Safi, Vaness, and the Hell-Bards, but all the Marstoks who’d fled the boat too. Everyone stared, breathing hard and trying to grasp what the rut had just happened.

  But the moment of recovery was short-lived. Pistol shots rang out, and when Safi turned, she saw another ship plowing this way, packed fore to aft with soldiers. They fired their weapons into the sky, a warning for people to clear—a warning that people obeyed with frantic shrieking.

  Leaving only Safi, Vaness, and the Hell-Bards sitting in a boat on dry land while they waited for death to reach them.