Truthwitch

by Susan Dennard

  “That’s the least of our worries,” Iseult said, increasing her roan’s pace. “That first ship is almost to the Lejna piers. This is clearly an ambush—” She broke off as a fresh burst of wind pounded into her—and into Safi.

  They both turned their faces away, blocked their eyes and mouths. The air tangled in their clothes and hair, clattered at the horses’ tack, and then rattled through bone-dry branches ahead. The only thing that didn’t bend to the wind’s will was the alert-stone’s light—which, Safi realized, she should probably put away. No need to attract the Marstoks.

  As she untied the stone from her saddlebag, Iseult called, “Which pier do you need to get to?”

  Good question. Safi had no rutting idea which dock was Pier Seven. There were too many empty posts to sort it out. “I’ll have to try all three.” She patted the mare, who was still dark with sweat but seemed better for the walking. Then she led the horse into the dead pines. “Got any ideas for a plan?”

  “Actually,” Iseult answered slowly, “I might. Do you remember that time outside of Veñaza City? When we wore each other’s clothes?”

  “You mean when we almost got killed by those Nommie-hating bastards at the tavern?”

  “That’s the time!” Iseult veered her roan closer to Safi, clearly hoping not to have to shout her way through this plan. Her hair flipped and flayed across her face. “We gave those men what they wanted to see, remember? But then the Nomatsi girl they thought they’d cornered turned out to be you.”

  “One of our finer tricks.” Safi smiled tightly, swatting her own wayward hair from her eyes.

  “Why wouldn’t that same plan work now?” Iseult asked. “We can still try to reach Lejna before that ship, but if that doesn’t work out—”

  “Doesn’t look like it will.”

  “—then we can ditch the horses, hide the alert-stone, and split up. I’ll be the decoy and draw them into the city. You can go to the piers. Once you’ve reached all three, go back to the alert-stone. Light it up, and I’ll find you.”

  “Absolutely rutting not.” Safi glowered at Iseult. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had. Why would you put yourself in danger—”

  “That’s just it,” Iseult interrupted. “The Truce says they can’t kill anyone on foreign soil, right?”

  “It also says they can’t land here, but they clearly don’t care about that.”

  “Actually, the Truce says no foreign vessels can land here,” Iseult countered. “Their vessel isn’t foreign.”

  “And that’s exactly my point, Iz! They’re tricking that clause, so why couldn’t they trick other clauses too? For all we know, they don’t even care if they break the Truce.”

  That gave Iseult pause—thank the gods—but when Safi lifted her reins to set off once more, Iseult’s hand shot up.

  “Threadstones,” she said flatly. “You’ll know if I’m in danger from your Threadstone. If it lights up, then you can come to my rescue.”

  “No—”

  “Yes.” A smile lifted the corner of Iseult’s lips as she towed out her Threadstone and gripped it tight. “You know this plan could work and it’s the only worthwhile strategy I can think of. Let’s just be glad that Lejna is a ghost town. There’s no one around to get hurt.”

  “Except for us, you mean.”

  “Stop arguing and start undressing.” Iseult slid from the saddle and looped her reins over a low branch. Then she began unbuttoning her blouse. “A storm’s coming, Saf, and you’re at its eye. I can be the right hand and you can be the left.”

  The left hand trusts the right, Mathew always said. The left hand never looks back until after the purse is grabbed.

  Iseult had always been the left hand—she’d always trusted Safi to distract until the end. Which meant it was Safi’s turn to do the same.

  Charged air burst through the forest. It lashed into Safi, around her … and then gathered itself behind her. She flung a glance back, eyes watering. Storm clouds, dark as pitch, swirled above the treetops.

  “I don’t like this,” Safi said, really having to yell now. “In fact, I hate this—the storm and the plan. Why does it have to be ‘we’? Why not just me?”

  “Because ‘just me’ isn’t who we are,” Iseult hollered back. “I’ll always follow you, Safi, and you’ll always follow me. Threadsisters to the end.”

  A fierce, burning need rose in Safi’s lungs at those words. She wanted to tell Iseult everything she felt—her gratitude, her love, her terror, her faith, but she didn’t. Instead, she smiled grimly. “Threadsisters to the end.”

  Then she did as Iseult had ordered: she clambered from her mare and began peeling off her clothes.

  * * *

  Aeduan smelled his old mentor a mile away. Her scent—crisp spring water and salt-lined cliffs—was unmistakable. As familiar to Aeduan as his pulse.

  And as unavoidable as death unless Aeduan was willing to leave the path—which he wasn’t—or slay her where she stood.

  Which he also wasn’t.

  The mile leading to her passed in a smear of green forest and yellow stone, predawn light and a rumbling sea storm. When he reached the narrowest point in the path—a place bordered by overhanging rocks to one side and wave-pounded cliffs on the other—Aeduan relinquished control of his blood. He gave the power of pulse and muscle back to his body and slowed to a stop.

  Monk Evrane stood still as a statue before him. The only movement was the hot wind in her hair, through her Carawen cloak. Her baldric lacked all of her blades save two. Her sword was nowhere to be seen.

  The older monk had not changed in the two years since Aeduan had left the Monastery. A bit browner in the face, perhaps. And tired—she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. Weeks even. Yet her hair was as silver as it had always been.

  And her expression as gentle and concerned as Aeduan remembered.

  It angered him. She’d never had a right to care about him—and she most certainly didn’t have that right now.

  “It has been too long,” she said in that throaty voice of hers. “You have grown.”

  Aeduan felt his jaw clench. Felt his eyes twitch. “Stand aside.”

  “You know I cannot do that, Aeduan.”

  He unsheathed his sword. It was a bare whisper over the crash of waves below. “I will cut you down.”

  “Not easily.” Evrane flicked up her wrist. A vicious blade dropped into her hand. With a smooth dip of her back foot, she sank into a defensive stance. “You have forgotten who trained you.”

  “And you have forgotten my witchery, Monk Evrane.” He eased his parrying knife from his hip and matched Evrane’s knee-bent stance.

  She moved—a spin that sent her white cloak flying. Distracting—certainly, but Aeduan had his eyes on her hand. After all, she was the one who’d taught him that the key to any knife fight was controlling the knife hand.

  Evrane whirled in close. He ducked low to meet her.

  But it was not her blade that he met. It was her feet—a boot heel in his neck. Then the dagger at his chest.

  He tottered back, not as fast as he should have. As he could have if he were fighting anyone but her.

  With a burst of magic, he shot back ten steps—too fast and too far for her to easily catch. Then he glanced down.

  Her knife had cut him. Four shallow slices that his witchery would heal whether he wanted it to or not. He would waste power on harmless surface wounds.

  “You know who they are,” Evrane called. She stalked steadily toward Aeduan. “It is your sworn duty to protect them.”

  Aeduan watched her from the tops of his eyes. “Have you heard the rumors, then? I can promise you, Monk Evrane, they are not the Cahr Awen. They’re both Aetherwitches.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She smiled, a terrifying smile of rapture and heady violence combined. “We must have misinterpreted the Records, and no Voidwitch is needed. For I saw it, Aeduan: those girls woke the Nubrevnan Origin Well—”

  Aeduan attac
ked then, sword out, yet for some reason, he did not lunge as hard as he should have. He did not veer his course at the last second or toss out knives in quick succession. He simply thrust out his sword, and, as he expected, Evrane swirled left and parried easily.

  “The girls swam to the spring’s center,” Evrane said.

  “Impossible.” Aeduan spun left.

  “I saw them do it. I saw the magic ignite and the earth tremble.” She jabbed at Aeduan with her knives—and then snap-kicked her toe into his knee.

  A toe that had a blade upon it.

  Pain exploded in Aeduan’s leg—as did blood. He bit back a roar, and twirled aside before more blades could reach him.

  She was trying to wear him down. Small wounds to slow him.

  But she was breathing heavily now—something that would never have happened two years ago. She was tired, and she would never outlast Aeduan. Even with her quick, relentless attacks. Even with him going easy.

  “What you saw,” Aeduan said, skipping back, “was what you wanted to see. The Well would never let them reach its center.”

  “Yet it did.” Evrane paused, hands and blades at the ready and an exultant gaze fastened on Aeduan. “Those girls touched the spring’s source and it awoke. Then the waters healed Iseult.”

  Iseult. The Nomatsi girl with no blood-scent.

  She was not one of the holy Cahr Awen—Aeduan refused to believe that. She was too plain. Too dark.

  As for the Truthwitch, if she were indeed the other half of the Cahr Awen, then giving her to his father would mean breaking his Carawen vow. The mere thought of that ignited ire in Aeduan’s veins. He would not lose all his fortunes because Monk Evrane was a gullible, desperate old fool.

  So in a burst of speed, Aeduan let a throwing knife fly.

  Evrane swatted it from the air and used the momentum of her spin to loose a knife of her own.

  Aeduan jerked left. Caught the knife—volleyed it back.

  But Evrane was already dancing up the overhang, using the terrain to her advantage. She scrabbled easily up the stones, unsheathing her stiletto—her final weapon—and then sprang out at Aeduan.

  He dove forward, rolling beneath her. Then he was on his feet, sword slashing out—

  It clashed against Evrane’s stiletto, locking in place on a parrying prong. Her arm trembled. Her small blade would never stand up to a sword; her strength would never stand up to Aeduan’s.

  “Remember … who you are,” she ground out. The steel of Aeduan’s sword slid … slid ever closer to her. At any moment, her elbow would give. Aeduan’s blade would slice through her neck. “The Cahr Awen have come to save us, Aeduan. Remember your duty to them.”

  Her stiletto slipped.

  Aeduan’s blade arced down. Bit into her neck—

  But he stopped it. Halted the blade at the last fraction of a second. Blood pooled on the steel. Evrane gasped for air, eyes huge.

  “We are done here,” Aeduan said. He wrenched back his sword. Drops of blood sprayed. Splattered on Evrane’s face and Aeduan’s uniform.

  Evrane’s whole face fell. She became a tired, old woman before his eyes.

  It was more than he could bear so, without another word, he sheathed his sword and launched himself down the path.

  Yet as he rounded a bend into the woods—and as thunder clapped much closer than it should’ve—steel thunked into Aeduan’s back. Grated against his ribs. Pierced his right lung.

  He recognized the feel of it. A Carawen throwing knife—the very one he’d thrown at Evrane only moments before.

  It hurt—not to mention all the blood that bubbled up in his throat made breathing tricky. Yet Aeduan couldn’t help but smile, for Evrane was as ruthless as ever. At least that hadn’t changed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  This might have been the dumbest plan Iseult had ever enacted and, by the Moon Mother, Merik and his contract had better be worth it.

  Eighty paces, Iseult thought as she watched the seventeen sailors approach her at full-speed down Lejna’s main seaside avenue. Twelve more thumped down the first pier at which their ship was now anchored.

  Because, of course, Marstoks had reached town right as Iseult and Safi had. Now soldiers—some of them no doubt Firewitches … or worse—were pelting toward her with terrifying grace.

  Iseult didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. She stood at the very edge of the city. When the sailors reached twenty paces away, she would move. That would be enough distance to stay ahead—or at least stay ahead long enough for Safi to get into town.

  Iseult had gotten a good glimpse of the terrain on the ride in, but most of her planning was based on guesswork. A lot of what she thought she knew about the cobblestoned streets and byways of Lejna could be wrong, and if those gaps in rooftops weren’t streets and that big square hole wasn’t a central courtyard, then she was, quite simply, screwed.

  There were other holes in her plan too—like how the white kerchief cut from Safi’s shirt (meant to hide Iseult’s hair) might not stay put in all this wind. Or how her choice of an alleyway between row houses—with its shadowy darkness and steep incline—was a terrible one.

  Or how standing here with her arms high and cutlass still sheathed might be a bit too vulnerable.

  Sixty paces. The sailors’ eyes were now visible, the gleam of their outthrust sabers impossible to ignore—as were their Threads of purple eagerness.

  They won’t kill you, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Stasis. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.

  Iseult sensed Safi’s Threads behind her—burning with dark green readiness as she crept through the shadows of the forest. If Safi was ready, then Iseult would be ready too. Initiate, complete—just in reverse this time.

  Thirty paces.

  Iseult braced her heels, sucked in a breath …

  Twenty paces.

  She ran.

  Shadows swallowed her whole, but gray light shone ahead. Cobblestones and storefronts.

  Footsteps followed behind. Even in their soft boots and with lightning crashing closer every second, there was no missing the drum-roll of Marstoki feet.

  Iseult skidded to the end of the alley, turning hard and aiming right. Street—a wide one. It was exactly what she’d hoped for, and it headed diagonally up the hill, toward some distant place that might be a courtyard.

  That had better be a courtyard.

  Broken doors and shattered windows coursed along the sides of her vision. The wind was still at her back, pushing her forward. Rain fell now too. It splattered on the street—made the cobblestones slick.

  In the back of her mind, Iseult considered how to account for the rain when she reached the courtyard. It would affect her defenses …

  Or not, since there were definitely more men pouring out of the street ahead. The ones on the pier must have moved up the hill to cut her off.

  Iseult had run herself directly into a corner and her plan was ruined before it had even begun.

  No, no. She could not let panic claim her. All she needed was a moment—just a brief second without Marstoks breathing down her neck.

  Iseult twisted sharply left; her feet slipped; she tumbled forward … and caught herself on a signpost. She lost precious time doing it, but no time to regret. Gulping in air, she punched her legs back into full speed. Surely this alleyway would lead her to another main road. Surely she could find a moment to think.

  Iseult honed in on individual cobblestones. On slamming one heel in front of the other and sucking down one more breath … Then one more after that. Stasis. Stasis. She could do this.

  She wheeled onto another wide lane.

  Where there were more Marstoks—barreling from another alleyway ahead. One after another, they sprinted at her. She was trapped. Or …

  Iseult skidded left—right through a broken door.

  Her shoulder shrieked at the impact. She bit through her tongue, filling her mouth and her mind with the bark of pain and the taste of blood. It was exactly the dis
traction she needed. Calm briefly swept in and allowed her to scan her terrain: a shop with a counter and a doorway beyond.

  Iseult launched herself over the counter. The window exploded, and the storm bawled through.

  Soldiers too, but Iseult was already uncoiling and hammering out the back door into an alleyway. She skirted right—sharp and fast. Lightning flashed and wind gusted overhead, but the buildings protected her.

  Iseult hit a corner, swooped around … and poison darts skittered into the wall behind her. Which meant there were Poisonwitches in the mix now. Marstoki Adders.

  Suddenly the buildings opened up. Light and wind sprayed down, and Iseult found herself in a courtyard. The courtyard she’d hoped for. A stained, ancient fountain stood at the center. It was the Nubrevnan god Noden—all carved muscles and coiling hair—waiting on His coral throne.

  Iseult hopped onto the knee-high fountain rim, slick with wet algae and bird crap. It made spinning toward the Marstoks easier, but didn’t offer much stability.

  All the while, the sailors tumbled toward Iseult, a swarm of rain-soaked uniforms and focused Threads. Small and lithe to enormously broad-chested, decidedly female to could-be-anything-really.

  With the wind and the rain thrashing down and with black clouds churning overhead, Iseult’s ears were useless, her skin hammered to wet numbness.

  Then the first soldiers reached the courtyard … and slowed. They eased to careful stops, and a female voice bellowed over the tempest’s howl, “She isn’t the one!”

  Iseult’s gut cracked. Her left hand flew to her head. No kerchief. Her black hair was soaked through and fully visible.

  “Find the real domna!” the woman ordered. “Back to shore!”

  The ice in Iseult’s stomach spread upward. Choked off her air. They were going to leave—just like that?

  “Wait!” she shrieked, springing off the fountain. If she could engage a few of them and keep them here, then maybe Safi could still make it.

  Iseult hurtled after the retreating soldiers. Several had paused and were swiveling back. Slowly, so slowly. Iseult reached for her cutlass, ready to attack.