Windwitch

by Susan Dennard

  Mostly, Iseult thought about death. Her own. After all, she had only a single cutlass and she traveled toward a future that might not exist.

  A future that could end very soon, if the Cleaved behind finally caught up. When they caught up, for Iseult was no good at this. It was why she relied so deeply on Safi—the one who could intuit with her bounding feet, escape with only instinct to drive her. Iseult was her own worst enemy in these breakneck situations, and she was letting fear drown out her Threadwitch reason.

  Until she caught sight of the morning glories. A carpet of them alongside the stream. Seemingly wild. Seemingly harmless.

  But not wild. Not harmless.

  Iseult was out of the stream in a heartbeat. Her numb feet tripped her as she scrambled up the stream’s side. She fell; her hands caught her, wrists snapping back.

  She didn’t notice, didn’t care, for there were morning glories everywhere she looked. Almost invisible in the mottled shadows, but unmissable if you knew how to look. Unmissable if you were a Nomatsi.

  Though it looked like an innocent deer path cut into the pines, Iseult knew a Nomatsi road when she saw one. Meant to protect the tribes from outsiders, these trap-lined trails were certain death for anyone the caravan had not invited in.

  Iseult had certainly not been invited, yet surely, as a fellow Nomatsi, she would not be deemed “outsider.”

  She kicked into a stiff march away from the stream. No more running, for a single false step would trigger the Poisonwitched mist these morning glories were meant to hide.

  There. She spotted the branch in the ground, wishbone shaped, with one kinked prong aiming north and one aiming south.

  The way out of the Nomatsi road. Or the way deeper into it.

  Iseult slowed her pace even more, easing around pine tree after pine tree. She crouched over a mossy stone. She tiptoed, she stalked, she scarcely breathed.

  The Cleaved were so close now. Black Threads curdled and strained into her awareness, hungry and foul. In minutes, they would be upon her.

  But that was all right, for up ahead was the next branch hammered into the earth, seamlessly woven into the forest. Clawed bear traps ahead, the branch alerted.

  To the Cleaved, though, it would alert nothing at all. Not until their legs were trapped in iron teeth too strong for any man to pry apart.

  The urge to sprint shook through Iseult’s legs. To bolt past these bear traps tucked in the fern-frilled clearing before her. She grabbed her Threadstone, squeezed tight, and kept her pace steady. Stasis, stasis, stasis. She counted six traps before she reached the other side.

  Then she was past, and now she could run. Just in time too, for behind her, the Nomatsi road awoke. Poisonwitch mists erupted, a heated charge rising in the distance. It juddered through the air, scratched down Iseult’s spine.

  The Cleaved had triggered it, yet the mist had no effect. The hunters were still coming.

  Iseult pumped her legs faster. Her breath came in punctuated gasps. If she could get just a bit farther, then maybe she could escape entirely.

  The bear traps snapped to life, clanging like midnight chimes. A howling burst out, torn from depraved throats. Four sets of Threads snapped and fought against the steel holding their legs.

  Iseult did not slow. She had to get ahead while she could, for this lead might be short-lived. Ferns and pine needles crashed beneath her feet. She had no idea where her heels would plant next. All she could see were the masts of pine trees. Saplings, trunks, roots—she sprinted around them. Twisted her ankles and jammed her knees.

  Speed was a mistake. Nomatsi roads weren’t meant to be crossed quickly. They demanded time. They demanded respect.

  So it should have come as no surprise when Iseult reached a clearing and the solid ground abruptly gave way. It should have come as no surprise when a net snapped up to yank her high into the trees.

  She yelped. Then flew straight upward, only to stop, dangling and swaying.

  Iseult’s breath sawed in. Razored out. At least, she thought vaguely, I still have my cutlass. Though little good it would do her when she was hanging twenty feet in the air.

  Or when a Cleaved strode to the center of the clearing, black blood trailing behind. His posture was bent. He was missing half his foot, and his skin roiled with whatever magic had erupted within to cleave him. Yet he moved with unusual focus. None of the mindless, frenetic violence typical of a Cleaved.

  Then Iseult realized why. Severed Threads drifted lazily above him, stretching into the sky. Almost invisible.

  The Puppeteer. Just as she’d done in Lejna to the Marstoki Adders and sailors, the Puppeteer must have cleaved these men from afar. And she must now be controlling them too.

  At that realization, Threads began winking out. One by one, the Cleaved still locked in iron traps were dying. As if the Puppeteer had decided their time was up and snipped apart their Severed Threads.

  Yet the man below still lived. He continued to prowl, leaving Iseult with only one option: she would have to cut herself down and try to kill the Cleaved before he killed her.

  Iseult never got to make that move, before the hunter scuffled over a second trap. A net ripped from the soil, slinging him upward. Ropes squeaked. He struggled and fought and howled, mere feet from Iseult until he to was abruptly silenced, his Threads vanishing in a hiss of shriveling black.

  The Puppeteer had killed him, leaving Iseult all alone on a Nomatsi road.

  Iseult couldn’t help it: she laughed. She had finally claimed the pause she so desperately needed. She had finally evaded her hunters, and this was where it landed her.

  Iseult’s laughter quickly dissolved. Trickled away on a swoop of cold.

  For if Esme had sent these Cleaved to hunt her, Iseult could only assume she would do so again.

  Worry about that later, she told herself. For now, she had no opponents, and her biggest worry was cutting herself down without breaking any bones in the process.

  “Oh, goat tits,” she murmured, invoking one of Safi’s favorite oaths and grabbing at her Threadstone—no longer flashing—for the burst of strength she liked to pretend it gave her.

  Then without another word or thought, and with only Threadwitch focus to guide her, Iseult set to sawing herself free.

  FOUR

  As Merik dipped and wove down Hawk’s Way, a crowded street that bisected Lovats from one end to the other and hugged the River Timetz, he prayed the storm rolling in would hold off just a few more hours. Long enough for him to get to proper shelter. Maybe long enough for him to find a proper meal too.

  He needed his strength back before he ventured to Pin’s Keep.

  Each breath Merik swallowed was spiced with rain about to break. Thunder rumbled beneath the wind-drums’ song across Lovats. Soldiers needed in Judgment Square.

  Lucky for Merik, he was a full mile from Judgment Square now, lost in the mayhem of Hawk’s Way, with its crisscrossing bridges and zigzagging side streets. The buildings leaned like sailors after a night drinking, and at each intersection, wreaths of last autumn’s oak leaves hung from corner to corner.

  The amber and yellow shades never failed to catch Merik’s eyes when he passed. So much of the Nihar lands had never seen an autumn harvest—or a spring rebirth—in the years that Merik had lived there. So much of the soil still festered with Dalmotti poison.

  But the poison had never reached Lovats far to the northeast, so braiding oak leaves with strands of sage and mint, with sunbursts of fire and green, was still quite possible here. These wreaths were for the royal funeral in three days. For Merik’s funeral.

  What a twisted sense of humor Noden had.

  On Merik hurried, the call for soldiers still hammering strong, even as he hopped the worn granite steps into an ancient temple off Hawk’s Way. This temple was as old as Lovats itself, and time had smoothed away the six columns waiting at the shadowy entrance.

  The Hagfishes. Noden’s messengers, tasked with carrying the dead beyond the farthest s
helf, deep down to the god’s court at the bottom of the sea. Now all that remained of the sculptures were iron rings at waist level and the faintest outlines of faces above.

  Merik followed a line of light inside, aiming for the farthest wall of the temple. The air cooled with each step; the wind-drums’ call softened. Gradually, all sunlight faded, replaced by two halfhearted lamps hanging above a stone Noden on his throne at the temple’s heart.

  The space was mostly empty at this time of day. Only two old ladies waited within, and they were currently headed out.

  “I hope there’s bread at the funeral,” said one of the women. Her reedy voice bounced off the granite god. “The Lindays handed out bread at the queen’s funeral—do you remember that?”

  “Don’t get too excited,” her companion muttered back. “I heard there might not be a funeral.”

  This hooked Merik’s attention. He slunk behind the throne and listened. “My nephew Rayet is a page at the palace,” the second woman continued, “and he told me that the princess didn’t react at all when she heard the news of the prince’s murder.”

  Of course she didn’t. Merik’s arms folded over his chest, fingers digging into his tender biceps.

  “Did your nephew know who killed the prince? That butcher at the end of Hawk’s Way told me it was the Marstoks, but then my neighbor said it was the Cartorrans…” Her voice faded into muffled nothing, and Merik didn’t try to follow.

  He’d heard enough. More than enough. Of course Vivia would cancel the funeral. He could practically hear her drawling voice: Why waste food on the people when the troops could use it instead?

  She cared only for power. For claiming the crown that the High Council had, thank Noden, still not given her. But if the king’s illness worsened—if he passed on as everyone believed Merik had—then there would be no keeping Vivia from the throne.

  Abandoning the statue of the god, Merik moved to the two frescoes on the back wall.

  On the right stood Lady Baile, patron saint of change, seasons, and crossroads. Noden’s Right Hand, they called her, and the lamp’s fire shimmered across golden wheat in her left hand, a silver trout in her right. Her skin was painted like a night sky, black with pinpricks of white, while the fox-shaped mask across her face shone blue. She stood upon a field of green, all colors on the fresco recently refreshed, as were the golden words beneath her:

  Though we cannot always see

  the blessing in the loss.

  Strength is the gift of our Lady Baile

  and she will never abandon us.

  Merik’s gaze flicked to a copper urn resting before her, overflowing with wood and silver coins. Offerings for her kindness. A petition for her to whisper in Noden’s ear, Help them.

  In vibrant heaps at the urn’s base lay wreaths of last year’s leaves, of sage and mint and rosemary—gifts to honor the dead. Merik wondered if any had been placed for Kullen.

  Then his chest clenched. He twisted away, fixing his gaze on the second fresco. On Noden’s Left Hand. The patron saint of justice, of vengeance, of rage.

  The Fury.

  That was what the woman in Judgment Square had called Merik. She’d meant it as a title. She’d meant it as a prayer.

  Bald, scarred, and hulking, the saint of all things broken bore only the name of his true nature. His one calling. He brought justice to the wronged and punishment to the wicked, and while Lady Baile was as beautiful as life itself, the Fury was more grotesque than even the Hagfishes.

  The crimson and black pigments of his body had faded, never to be refreshed, as had the gray cavernous backdrop behind him—and the words below the Fury’s clawed feet:

  Why do you hold a razor in one hand?

  So men remember that I am sharp as any edge.

  And why do you hold broken glass in the other?

  So men remember that I am always watching.

  “And this,” Merik murmured to himself, “is who that woman mistook me for.” This was the monster she had seen when she’d looked upon him.

  He turned to the Fury’s empty urn. Always empty, for no one wished to accidentally attract his eye, lest they too be judged.

  Outside the temple, the storm finally broke. Rain clattered down, loud enough for Merik to hear. Yet when he glanced back toward the columns, expecting to find people rushing in for shelter, he found only a single figure loping inside. She dripped water to the flagstones with each of her long steps.

  Cam. Merik’s only ally.

  “Dried lamb?” she called once she was close enough. Her voice echoed off the granite flagstones. Like Merik, she wore a hooded tan coat atop her beige shirt and black trousers—all of it homespun, all of it filthy. “The meat’s not too wet.”

  Merik forced himself to summon a glare. To scold: “What have I said about stealing?”

  “Does that mean,” she began, her black eyes glittering with lamp-lit mischief, “that you don’t want it? I can always save it for myself, you know.”

  Merik wrested it from her grip. Hunger, he had learned, beat morality every time.

  “S’what I thought.” A gloating grin split her face, stretching the white patches on her brown cheek. “Even dead men gotta eat.”

  Cam’s whole body was speckled with those swaths of white skin. Down the right side of her neck they spanned, stretching onto her left forearm, her right hand. Obvious, if one was looking; invisible if one wasn’t.

  Merik had certainly never looked before. He’d never been able to recall her name—she’d simply been the new recruit. Then again, he hadn’t known she was a girl either. She’d looked the part of a ship’s boy on the Jana, and she’d played it well enough too.

  Not once had Merik commented on Cam’s sex though. And since she seemed determined to keep her secret, he had continued to address her as “boy.” After all, what did it really matter in the end? She was the one who had stayed behind while the rest of the crew went to the village of Noden’s Gift.

  My gut told me you weren’t dead, she’d explained to Merik, so I searched and searched and searched until I found you.

  “Are the streets safe, boy?” he asked through a mouthful of tough meat. The lamb had been smoked too long.

  “Hye,” Cam mumbled through her own full jowls. “Though no thanks to you, sir. The Royal Forces are all riled up. Which”—she tore off another bite with vicious emphasis—“is why you should’ve let me come along.”

  Merik huffed a sigh. He and Cam had exchanged this same argument at least once a day since the explosion. Each time Merik had slunk into a small village to find supplies or gone hunting along the riverbanks for supper, Cam had begged to join. Each time, Merik had refused.

  “If you’d been there,” Merik countered, “then the Royal Forces would be hunting you now too.”

  “Not a chance, sir.” Cam swatted the air with her lamb strip. “If I’d been with you, I’d have kept watch, see? Then that pickpocket wouldn’t have nabbed this…” She fished a flimsy coin purse from her coat and dangled it before Merik’s nose. “Did you even notice someone had picked your pocket, sir?”

  Merik swore under his breath. Then he snatched it from her. “I had not noticed, and how did you get it back?”

  “Same way I get everything.” She wiggled her fingers at him. The glistening, jagged scar on the edge of her left hand shone.

  As Cam relayed how she’d enjoyed Merik’s adventure from a nearby rooftop, he settled in to the familiar rhythm of her storytelling. Unfiltered, uncultured, unabashed—that was how Cam spoke. Dragging out words for effect or lowering her voice to a tense, terrifying whisper.

  For the past two weeks, the girl had talked endlessly. And for the past two weeks, Merik had listened. In fact, more often than not, Merik had found himself clinging to those moments when he could lose himself in Cam’s voice. When he could ride the crests and waves of her story and forget, for just a few breaths, that his life had been swept away by hell-waters.

  “The streets are crawling with sold
iers now, sir. But,” Cam finished, flashing one of her easy smiles, “with the rain going like this, I can get us into Old Town unseen. You gotta finish eating first, though.”

  “Hye, hye,” he muttered, and though he would have preferred to savor the feel of food down his gullet—Noden’s breath, it had been so long—Merik choked down the final smoky mouthful of lamb. Then he pushed to his feet and offered a gruff, “Lead the way, boy. Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Vivia Nihar stood before the Battle Room’s massive doors, the grain in the pale, unpainted oak blurring like the clouds that gathered outside. Voices hummed through, serious and low.

  No regrets, she thought, tugging at her navy frock coat’s sleeves. Just keep moving. She smoothed her blouse underneath. It was the same set of phrases she thought each morning upon waking. The same phrases she had to recite to get through the day, through the difficult decisions. Through the hole that lived forever just behind her breastbone.

  No regrets, keep moving … Where is the footman? The princess of Nubrevna was not meant to open her own blighted door. Especially not when all thirteen vizers of the High Council waited on the other side, judging her every move.

  All day long, she was hounded by palace staff or city officials or sycophantic nobility. Yet now, when she actually needed someone to help her, no one was near.

  With a frown twitching on her lips, Vivia squinted at a patch of light at the end of the long, dark hall. Two silhouettes fought to close the enormous doors—a sign that the clouds outside would soon thicken to a storm.

  Oh, hang it. Vivia had too much to do to wait for footmen and thunderheads. As the king always said, Sitting still is a quick path to madness.

  The oak creaked; the hinges groaned; the vizers in the long hall silenced. Then Vivia was inside, and thirteen pairs of eyes were shifting from the single long table at the room’s center …

  To her. Just staring like fools, every one of them.

  “What?” She let the doors groan shut behind her. “Did Noden answer my prayers? Have the Hagfishes finally claimed your tongues?”