Truthwitch

by Susan Dennard

  “I’m sorry,” Safi said, her voice muffled as she squirmed from her sodden tunic. Then her shirt was completely off, and she tossed it on a windowsill. Safi’s usually tanned skin was pale beneath her freckles.

  “Don’t apologize.” Iseult gathered her own discarded clothes. “I’m the one who told you about the card game in the first place.”

  “This is true,” Safi replied, her voice shaking as she hopped on one foot and tried to remove her pants—with her boots still on. She always did that, and it boggled Iseult’s mind that an eighteen-year-old could still be too impatient to undress herself properly. “But,” Safi added, “I’m the one who wanted the nicer rooms. If we’d just bought that place two weeks ago—”

  “Then we’d have rats for roommates,” Iseult interrupted. She shuffled to the nearest water-free, sunlit patch of floor. “You were right to want a different place. It costs more, but it would’ve been worth it.”

  “Would’ve been being the key words.” With a loud grunt, Safi finally wrestled free of her pants. “There’ll be no place of our own now, Iz. I bet every guard in Veñaza City is out looking for us. Not to mention the…” For a moment, Safi stared at her boots. Then, in a frantic movement, she tore off the right one. “So will the Bloodwitch.”

  Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch. The words pulsed through Iseult in time to her heart. In time to her blood.

  Iseult had never seen a Bloodwitch before … or anyone with a magic linked to the Void. Voidwitches were just scary stories after all—they weren’t real. They didn’t guard Guildmasters and try to gut you with swords.

  After wringing out her pants and smoothing each fold on a windowsill, Iseult shuffled to a leather satchel at the back of the lighthouse. She and Safi always stowed an emergency kit here before a heist, just in case the worst scenario unfolded.

  Not that they’d held many heists before. Only every now and then for the lowlifes who deserved it.

  Like those two apprentices who’d ruined one of Guildmaster Alix’s silk shipments and tried to blame it on Safi.

  Or those thugs who’d busted into Mathew’s shop while he was away and stolen his silver cutlery.

  Then there were those four separate occasions when Safi’s taro card games had ended in brawls and missing coins. Justice had been required, of course—not to mention the reclamation of pilfered goods.

  Today’s encounter, though, was the first time the emergency satchel had actually been needed.

  After rummaging past the spare clothes and a water bag, Iseult found two rags and a tub of lanolin. Then she hauled up the girls’ discarded weapons and trudged back to Safi. “Let’s clean our blades and come up with a plan. We have to get back to the city somehow.”

  Safi yanked off her second boot before accepting her sword and parrying knife. Both girls settled cross-legged on the rough floor, and Iseult sank into the familiar barnyard scent of the grease. Into the careful scrubbing motion of cleaning her scythes.

  “What did the Bloodwitch’s Threads look like?” Safi asked quietly.

  “I didn’t notice,” Iseult murmured. “Everything happened so fast.” She rubbed all the harder at the steel, protecting her beautiful Marstoki blades—gifts from Mathew’s Heart-Thread, Habim—against rust.

  A silence stretched through the stone ruins. The only sounds were the squeak of cloth on steel, the eternal crash of Jadansi waves.

  Iseult knew she seemed unperturbed as she cleaned, but she was absolutely certain that her Threads twined with the same frightened shades as Safi’s.

  Iseult was a Threadwitch though, which meant she couldn’t see her own Threads—or those of any other Threadwitch.

  When her witchery had manifested at nine years old, Iseult’s heart had felt like it would pound itself to dust. She was crumbling beneath the weight of a million Threads, none of which were her own. Everywhere she looked, she saw the Threads that build, the Threads that bind, and the Threads that break. Yet she could never see her own Threads or how she wove into the world.

  So, just as every Nomatsi Threadwitch did, Iseult had learned to keep her body cool when it ought to be hot. To keep her fingers still when they ought to be trembling. To ignore the emotions that drove everyone else.

  “I think,” Safi said, scattering Iseult’s thoughts, “the Bloodwitch knows I’m a Truthwitch.”

  Iseult’s scrubbing paused. “Why,” her voice was flat as the steel in her hands, “would you think that?”

  “Because of the way he smiled at me.” Safi shivered. “He smelled my magic, just like the tales say, and now he can hunt me.”

  “Which means he could be tracking us right now.” Frost ran down Iseult’s back. Jolted in her shoulders. She scoured at her blade all the harder.

  Normally, the act of cleaning helped her find stasis. Helped her thoughts slow and her practicality rise to the surface. She was the natural tactician, while Safi was the one with the first sparks of an idea.

  Initiate, complete.

  Except no solutions came to Iseult right now. She and Safi could lie low and avoid city guards for a few weeks, but they couldn’t hide from a Bloodwitch.

  Especially if that Bloodwitch knew what Safi was—and could sell her to the highest bidder.

  When a person stood directly before Safi, she could tell truth from lie, reality from deception. And as far as Iseult had learned in her tutoring sessions with Mathew, the last recorded Truthwitch had died a century ago—beheaded by a Marstoki emperor for allying herself with a Cartorran queen.

  If Safi’s magic ever became public knowledge, she would be used as a political tool …

  Or eliminated as a political threat.

  Safi’s power was that valuable and that rare. Which was why, for Safi’s entire life, she’d kept her magic secret. Like Iseult, she was a heretic: an unregistered witch. The back of Safi’s right hand was unadorned, and no Witchmark tattoo proclaimed her powers. Yet one of these days, someone other than one of Safi’s closest friends would figure out what she was, and when that day came, soldiers would storm the Silk Guildmaster’s guest room and drag away Safi in chains.

  Soon, the girls’ blades were cleaned and resheathed, and Safi was pinning Iseult with one of her harder, more contemplative stares.

  “Out with it,” Iseult ordered.

  “We may have to flee the city, Iz. Leave the Dalmotti Empire entirely.”

  Iseult rolled her salty lips together, trying not to frown. Trying not to feel.

  The thought of abandoning Veñaza City … Iseult couldn’t do it. The capital of the Dalmotti Empire was her home. The people in the Northern Wharf District had stopped noticing her pale Nomatsi skin or her angled Nomatsi eyes.

  And it had taken her six and a half years to carve out that niche.

  “For now,” Iseult said quietly, “let’s worry about getting into the city unseen—and let’s pray, too, that the Bloodwitch didn’t actually smell your blood.” Or your magic.

  Safi huffed a weary sigh and nestled into a beam of sunlight. It made her skin glow, her hair luminescent. “To whom should I pray?”

  Iseult scratched at her nose, grateful to have the subject shift. “We were almost killed by a Carawen monk, so why not pray to the Origin Wells?”

  Safi gave a little shudder. “If that person prays to the Origin Wells, then I don’t want to. How about that Nubrevnan god? What’s His name?”

  “Noden.”

  “That’s the one.” Safi clasped her hands to her chest and stared up at the ceiling. “Noden, God of the Nubrevnan waves—”

  “I think it’s all waves, Safi. And everything else too.”

  Safi rolled her eyes. “God of all waves and everything else too, can you please make sure no one comes after us? Especially … him. Just keep him far away. And if you could keep the Veñaza City guards away too, that would be nice.”

  “This is easily the worst prayer I have ever heard,” Iseult declared.

  “Weasels piss on you, Iz. I’m not done yet.” Safi heave
d a sigh through her nose and then resumed her prayer. “Please return all of our money to me before he or Habim get back from their trip. And … that is all. Thank you very much, oh sacred Noden.” Then, she hastily added, “Oh, and please ensure that Chiseled Cheater gets exactly what he deserves.”

  Iseult almost snorted at that last request—except that a wave crashed into the lighthouse, sudden and rough against the stone. Water splattered Iseult’s face. She swiped it away, agitated. Warm instead of cool.

  “Please, Noden,” she whispered, rubbing sea spray off her forehead. “Please just get us through this alive.”

  THREE

  Reaching Mathew’s coffee shop where Iseult lived proved harder than Safi had anticipated. She and Iseult were exhausted, hungry, and bruised to hell-flames, so even the basic act of walking made Safi want to groan. Or sit down. Or at least ease her aches with a hot bath and pastries.

  But baths and pastries weren’t happening anytime soon. Guards swarmed everywhere in Veñaza City, and by the time the girls had straggled into the Northern Wharf District, it was almost dawn. They’d spent half the night hiking blearily from their lighthouse to the capital and then the other half of the night slinking through alleys and clambering over kitchen gardens.

  Every flash of white—every dangling piece of laundry, every torn sailcloth or tattered curtain—had punched Safi’s stomach into her mouth. But it had never been the Bloodwitch, thank the gods, and right as night began fading into dawn, the sign to Mathew’s coffee shop appeared. It poked out of a narrow road branching off the main wharf-side avenue.

  REAL MARSTOKI COFFEE

  BEST IN VEÑAZA CITY

  It was not, in fact, real Marstoki coffee—Mathew wasn’t even from the Empire of Marstok. Instead, the coffee was filtered and bland, catering to, as Habim always called it, “dull western palates.”

  Mathew’s coffee was also not the best in the city. Even Mathew would admit that the dingy hole-in-the-wall in the Southern Wharf District had much better coffee. But up here on the northern edges of the capital, people didn’t wander in for coffee. They came in for business.

  The sort of business Wordwitches like Mathew excelled at—the trade of rumors and secrets, the planning of heists and cons. He ran coffee shops all across the Witchlands, and any news about anything always reached Mathew first.

  It was his Wordwitchery that had made Mathew the best choice for Safi’s tutor, since it allowed him to speak all tongues.

  More important, though, Mathew’s Heart-Thread, Habim, had worked for Safi’s uncle her entire life—both as a man-at-arms and as a constantly displeased instructor. So when Safi had been sent south, it had only made sense for Mathew to take over where Habim had left off.

  Not that Habim had completely abandoned Safi’s training. He visited his Heart-Thread often in Veñaza City—and then proceeded to make Safi’s life miserable with extra hours of speed drills or ancient battle strategies.

  Safi reached the coffee shop first and after hopping a puddle of sewage that was frighteningly orange, she began tapping out the lock-spell on the front door—a recent installment since the stolen cutlery incident. Habim could complain to Mathew all he wanted about the cost of an Aetherwitched lock-spell, but as far as Safi could see, it was worth the money. Veñaza City had a hefty crime rate—first because it was a port, and second because wealthy Guildmasters were just so appealing to piestra-hungry lowlifes.

  Of course, it was those same elected Guildmasters who also paid for an extensive, seemingly endless collection of city guards—one of whom was pausing right at the alleyway’s mouth. He faced away, scanning the moored ships of the Northern Wharf District.

  “Faster,” Iseult muttered. She prodded Safi’s back. “The guard is turning … turning…”

  The door flew wide, Iseult shoved, and Safi toppled into the dark shop.

  “What the rut?” she hissed, rounding on Iseult. “The guards know us around here!”

  “Exactly,” Iseult retorted, shutting the door and bolting the locks. “But from afar, we look like two peasants busting into a locked up coffee shop.”

  Safi mumbled an unwilling, “Good point,” as Iseult stepped forward and whispered, “Alight.”

  At once twenty-six bewitched wicks guttered to life, revealing bright, curly Marstoki designs on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It was overdone—too many rugs of clashing patterns leapt at Safi—but, like the coffee, westerners had a certain idea about how a Marstoki shop ought to look.

  With the sigh of someone finally able to breathe, Iseult strode toward the spiral staircase in the back corner. Safi followed. Up, up they went, first to the second story, where Mathew and Habim lived. Next, to the slope-ceilinged attic that Iseult called home, its narrow space crowded with two cots and a wardrobe.

  For six and a half years now, Iseult had lived and studied and worked here. After she’d fled her tribe, Mathew had been the only employer willing to hire and lodge a Nomatsi.

  Iseult hadn’t moved away since—though not for a lack of wanting to.

  A place of my own.

  Safi must’ve heard her Threadsister say that a thousand times. A hundred thousand times. And maybe if Safi had grown up sharing a bed with her mother in a one-room hut as Iseult had, then she’d want a wider, more private, more personal space as well.

  Yet … Safi had ruined all of Iseult’s plans. Every single saved piestra was gone, and all of the Veñaza City guards were actively hunting Safi and Iseult. It was literally the worst-case scenario possible, and no emergency satchel or hiding in a lighthouse was going to get them through this mess.

  Gulping back nausea, Safi staggered to a window across the narrow room and shoved it open. Hot, fish-saturated air wafted in, familiar and soothing. With the sun just rising in the east, the clay rooftops of Veñaza City shone like orange flames.

  It was beautiful, tranquil, and gods below, Safi loved that view. Having grown up in drafty ruins in the middle of the Orhin Mountains—having been locked away in the eastern wing whenever Uncle Eron was in one of his moods, Safi’s life in the Hasstrel castle had been filled with broken windows and snow seeping in. With frozen winds and dank, slithering mold. Everywhere she looked, her eyes would land on carvings or paintings or tapestries of the Hasstrel mountain bat. A grotesque, dragon-like creature with the motto “Love and Dread” scrolling through its talons.

  But the bridges and canals of Veñaza City were always sunbaked and smelling wonderfully of rotten fish. Mathew’s shop was always bright and crowded. The wharves were always filled with sailors’ deliciously offensive oaths.

  Here, Safi felt warm. Here, she felt welcome, and sometimes, she even felt wanted.

  Safi cleared her throat. Her hand fell from the latch, and she turned to find Iseult changing into a gown of olive green.

  Iseult dipped her head to the wardrobe. “You can wear my extra day gown.”

  “That’ll show these, though.” Safi rolled up a salt-stiffened sleeve to reveal scrapes and bruises peppering her arms—all of which would be visible in the short, capped sleeves that were in style.

  “Then it’s lucky for you I still have…” Iseult swept two cropped black jackets from the wardrobe. “These!”

  Safi’s lips crooked up. The jackets were standard attire for all Guild apprentices—and these two in particular were trophies from the girls’ first holdup.

  “I still maintain,” Safi declared, “that we should’ve taken more than just their jackets when we left them tied up in the storeroom.”

  “Yes, well, next time someone ruins a silk shipment and blames you, Saf, I promise we’ll take more than just their jackets.” Iseult tossed the black wool to Safi, who swooped it from the air.

  As she hastily tore off her clothes, Iseult settled on the edge of her cot, lips pursed to one side. “I’ve been thinking,” she began evenly. “If that Bloodwitch is really after us, then maybe the Silk Guildmaster could protect you. He’s your technical guardian after all, and you do live
in his guest room.”

  “I don’t think he’ll harbor a fugitive.” Safi’s face tightened with a wince. “It wouldn’t be right to drag Guildmaster Alix into this anyway. He’s always been so kind to me, and I’d hate to repay him with trouble.”

  “All right,” Iseult said, her expression unchanging. “My next plan involves the Hell-Bards. They’re in Veñaza City for the Truce Summit, right? To protect the Cartorran Empire? Maybe you could appeal to them for help since your uncle used to be one—and I doubt even the Dalmotti guards would be stupid enough to cross a Hell-Bard.”

  Safi’s wince only deepened at that idea. “Uncle Eron was a dishonorably discharged Hell-Bard, Iz. The entire Hell-Bard Brigade now hates him, and Emperor Henrick hates him even more.” She snorted, a disdainful sound that skittered off the walls and rattled in her belly. “To make it worse, the Emperor is looking for any excuse to hand over my title to one of his slimy sycophants. I’m sure that holding up a Guildmaster is sufficient reason to do so.”

  For most of Safi’s childhood, her uncle had trained her like a soldier and treated her like one too—whenever he’d been sober enough to pay attention, at least. But when Safi had turned twelve, Emperor Henrick had decided it was time for Safi to come to the Cartorran capital for her education. What does she know of leading farmers or organizing a harvest? Henrick had bellowed at Uncle Eron, while Safi had waited, small and silent, behind him. What experience does Safiya have running a household or paying tithes?

  It was that last concern—the paying of exorbitant Cartorran taxes—that had Emperor Henrick the most concerned. With all of the nobility wrapped around his ring-clad fingers, he wanted to ensure he had Safi ensnared too.

  But Henrick’s attempt to nab one more loyal domna had fallen apart, for Uncle Eron hadn’t sent Safi to study in Praga with all the other young nobles. Instead, Eron had packed her off to the south, to the Guildmasters and tutors of Veñaza City.

  It was the first and last time Safi had ever felt anything like gratitude for her uncle.