With more care and quiet than Iseult had known herself capable of, she knelt beside the Bloodwitch. His baldric glistened in the rain, the knife hilts rising and dropping in time to his breath. Iseult’s fingers moved to the fat iron buckle resting in the groove between his chest and his shoulder. To unfasten it, she would have to touch bare skin, for the buckle had snagged in his shirt and torn the cotton wide.
Bare skin. Pale, Nomatsi skin.
A man’s skin.
“Fanciful fool,” she spat at last, and in a burst of speed she unhooked the buckle. Aeduan’s skin was warm. Surprisingly so, given the rain’s cold beat. Her fingers were certainly ice against him—
His breath hitched. She froze.
But he didn’t awaken, and after a moment of staring at his sleeping face, she resumed her work. Faster now, towing the leather strap out from beneath him.
Goddess, he was heavy.
One heave. A second. The leather snaked free in a twinkling melody of knife hilts and buckles. Iseult’s lips curved in triumph, and she rocked back onto her knees.
With the baldric removed, there was no missing the blood on Aeduan’s shirt. Not from a single wound, but from six small ones, each evenly spaced and an inch wide. Two below his collarbone, two on his chest, two on his abdomen.
Iseult slung the baldric over her shoulder and stole carefully away. She left the sack of coins where it was before walking all the way back to her campsite.
There she hid the Bloodwitch’s knives and waited for him to wake up.
NINE
The sixteenth chimes came and went with no Cam or food to show for it. Unable to sit still—for it was a quick path to madness, as Aunt Evrane always said—Merik forced himself to move, to clear away books from the kitchen table, the cupboard’s counter, the bed.
A knock. Merik spun around, dropping a book. His magic flared in …
It was just the window. The shutter outside was open, and it had cracked against the warped glass. Merik’s heart returned—albeit slowly—to his chest. His winds, though, didn’t settle until he had reached the glass.
Outside, rain drizzled. A gray mist atop a shadowy city. With the weak lamplight behind Merik, there was no missing his reflection.
The Fury stared back.
Though bulbous and misshapen from the flaws in the glass, the hairlessness and red splotches were entirely Merik’s own. Remnants from the explosion. Hurriedly, he screwed open the window, pinching his fingers on unfamiliar fastenings before latching tight the shutter.
But with the wooden shutters behind the window, the reflection—the similarities—grew more pronounced. Over the entire right side of Merik’s face, and over his right ear too, was a large patch of shiny red skin with the faintest line of black to circle around. Dirt, he assumed, since it had been days since he’d had a real bath.
The explosion had hit Merik on that side, so his right shoulder, his right arm, his right leg—they had taken all the flames, all the force.
Merik bent a cautious glance to the front door, but it remained locked. Cam couldn’t barge in when she returned, not without Merik to tap out the lock-spell. So with methodical care, he eased off his shirt. For eleven days, he’d examined these wounds, yet he’d witnessed only a fraction of the full picture. A sliver of the true monster that now stood before the window.
Eyes hooded, Merik scrutinized his body in the glassy glare. Dirt, if that was indeed what marked him, laced across the new pink flesh coating his right side. Down the black moved, gathering most densely at his chest. At his heart.
A bath was in order, he decided, once he had the time. Once the streets weren’t crawling with Royal Forces. Once he’d gotten what he needed from Pin’s Keep.
He stepped left, twisting to inspect his back. The dirt continued down his shoulder blades. The burns too, though far fewer.
“Destined for greatness?” he murmured as he slipped on his shirt. “I know you always said that, Kull, but look at me now. I should be dead, and you should still be alive.”
As the words fell from Merik’s mouth, a memory percolated to the surface. You should be dead, and Mother should still be alive.
Merik snorted humorlessly. Aunt Evrane always used to say that Vivia hadn’t meant what she’d muttered at the funeral. That the sight of their mother’s body, smashed from the force of her jump off the water-bridge, had simply driven Vivia to thoughtless cruelties.
But Merik had known the truth then—and he knew it now too. Vivia had always blamed Merik for their mother’s melancholy. With each new instance of Jana hiding in bed for days on end, of Jana bringing a knife to her own wrists, of Jana locking out her children for weeks at a time, Vivia had turned colder. And colder. For in her mind, their mother had descended into darkness only after Merik had been born.
Perhaps it was true, even if Aunt Evrane always insisted otherwise. Jana’s darkness awoke when she married my brother, Evrane always said. Not after she had you. Yet Merik wasn’t inclined to believe that claim. Particularly since Evrane’s relationship with her brother was no better than Merik’s was with Vivia.
Of course, Vivia had taken her hatred a step further than Serafin ever had: she had tried to eliminate Merik entirely. Not only would it clear the way for her to rule as she saw fit, but it also was revenge for the suicide Merik hadn’t caused.
Vivia had failed to kill him, though.
So now it was Merik’s turn.
* * *
When Cam returned, she was soaked through. Merik opened the door at her pounding, and she pushed inside, dripping water and leaving wet prints behind.
Merik waited until the door was shut to inspect the armful of food clutched at her chest. Hard bread, limp vegetables, and shriveled fruit—all wrapped in a jagged piece of wide-weave canvas.
Merik gathered it from her cold, rain-slick hands, his stomach rumbling, and after a gruff mumble of gratitude, he headed for the dry sink. Though some structures in Lovats had Waterwitched plumbing, Kullen’s place was not one of them.
When Cam made no move to follow, he glanced back. “What is it?”
A gulp. Then Cam slunk forward, rubbing at her damp arms and avoiding Merik’s gaze. “They’re calling you the Fury on the streets, sir.”
Ah. So that had stuck, then.
“Ain’t too many soldiers out now,” she went on, “but the ones who are … Well, they’re all lookin’ for you. For the … Fury.”
With a sharp exhale, Merik dropped the vegetables and fruit into the sink—a limp head of fennel, four fat turnips thick with dirt, and six blue plums only slightly tinged with brown rot. The round loaf of barley bread was stale enough to break a tooth on, so Merik rewrapped it in the wet canvas and set it on the table to soak and soften.
His attention lingered there, brow knitting. “Will it be possible to reach Pin’s Keep? With so many soldiers still searching?” He swung his eyes back to the girl, whose lips puckered sideways. An expression Merik was beginning to recognize as her thoughtful face.
“Are you sure, sir … That is to say…” She cleared her throat, moving abruptly to the sink, where, with surprising urgency, she set to scrubbing at the turnips with her knuckles. The scar on her left hand rippled and stretched.
“What?” Merik pressed, moving a single step closer.
Cam’s cleaning turned all the more enthusiastic. “You sure you want to go to Pin’s Keep, sir? What if … what if it wasn’t your sister who tried to kill you?”
Heat fanned up Merik’s neck. “It was her.” No emotion, no emphasis. “I knew it was her before Judgment Square, and I have no doubt now.”
“Just ’cos she runs Pin’s Keep,” Cam challenged, “don’t mean she sent that assassin.”
The heat spread, rising up Merik’s spine. “I know it was her, Cam. I’ve been a hindrance to her plans ever since I moved back to the capital. And now—now,” he went on, the heat spreading into his lungs, “I have a direct connection between Vivia and the assassin. I lack one final piece of
proof, boy. Something tangible to give the High Council. I’m certain I’ll find that at Pin’s Keep.”
“And what if you don’t?” Cam’s voice was a mere squeak now, yet something in her pitch gave Merik pause.
He fisted his fingers. The joints cracked. “Where,” he asked, “is this coming from?”
She scrubbed harder, a loud scratch-scratch beneath her words. “It’s just that, sir, I heard something on the street. Something bad. Something that makes me think … Well, it makes me think your sister ain’t behind all this.”
“And what did you hear?”
“That there was a second explosion.” And with those words, her story tumbled out. “Just like the one on the Jana, sir, and people are sayin’ it was the Cartorrans who did it. Or maybe the Dalmottis. But they’re saying that whoever it was that blew us up, it’s the same people who blew up that other ship too.”
“What,” Merik asked, even as his heart sank in a great downward rush, “other ship?”
“Oh, sir.” Cam stopped mid-scrape of her turnip, posture wilting. “It was the Empress of Marstok’s ship, and everyone on board was killed. Including … including that domna we carried on the Jana. Safiya fon Hasstrel.”
* * *
Vivia found nothing new underground. Just more spiders and centipedes and amphibians on the run, and despite what had seemed like hours of moving stones from the cave-in, the rubble seemed as thick as ever.
Her frustration was good, though. She savored how it made her jaw work side to side as she strode down Hawk’s Way, through a halfhearted rainstorm. She used the frustration to sharpen her mask into an uncrossable sneer, and by the time she reached the largest of the city’s watchtowers, she was a Nihar once more.
She ascended the tower, nodding curtly as soldiers saluted one by one, fists against their hearts. It was so different from the Battle Room. No mocking stares. No waiting for her to trip and fall and fail. Vivia trusted these men with her life, and she knew they trusted her in turn.
“Bormin, Ferric,” she said, naming each man beside the door at the tower’s highest level before she strode outside into the rain. She crossed to the officer on deck: the tall, broad-shouldered Stacia Sotar—or Stix to those who knew her well enough to earn that privilege.
Stix’s black skin was slick with rain, her white, tied-back hair plastered against her skull. She waved to Vivia, and her Witchmark—an upside-down triangle that signified her as a full Waterwitch—stretched long.
While Vivia could control water in liquid form, Stix controlled all aspects of the element. From ice to steam to this storm dribbling down. And while Vivia needed water nearby to draw from, Stix could summon vapor from the very air.
As always, Stix squinted with nearsighted eyes as Vivia approached. Once she realized who was on deck, she saluted. “Sir.” She always called Vivia that—not Your Highness, not Princess. To Stix, Vivia was a ship’s captain.
To Vivia, Stix was … Too good for me.
Vivia adjusted her face to match Stix’s stern frown before she slipped her spyglass from her coat. Atop this tower, the highest point in the city, she could see clear across the mismatched rooftops and then straight across the valley and steppe farms in the distance. Even with the rain falling, the colorful farmhouses stood out amid all that brilliant green.
Vivia loved the sea. The never-ending swell of teal waves. The simplicity in knowing that all that stood between life and death was some tarred wood and faith in Noden’s benevolence.
But she loved this view so much more. The weight of Lovats beneath her. The verdant life rippling ahead.
This was home.
The sea allowed men and women to pass for a time, but it was an uneasy alliance. Her fickle temper might turn on a thunderhead’s whim. Like the Nihars. The land, though, welcomed men and women so long as they gave as much as they claimed. Partners. Friends. Thread-family.
Vivia wet her lips, swinging the spyglass left. Right. But no concerning thunderheads crossed her sight. Just gray, hazy gray all the way across the valley. Even the Sentries of Noden, at the end of the southern water-bridge, were crisp black silhouettes against the midday sky. The dam above the northern water-bridge looked as it always did: a featureless, sunlit wall with a shoddily mended fracture slicing down its heart.
One more thing the High Council refused to properly deal with.
Sighing, she raked her spyglass’s view across the Water-Bridges of Stefin-Ekart that spanned from the mountains around the valley to the Lovats Plateau, each as wide as the river that fed into them. They hovered so high above the valley that clouds wisped below or alongside the ships packed hull to hull.
So many ships, so many Nubrevnans, and nowhere left to put them. At least until I find the under-city.
Stix cleared her throat. “Are you all right, sir? You seem … off.”
Startled, Vivia almost dropped the glass. Her frown must have smoothed away. No regrets. Keep moving. With far too much force, she clacked shut the spyglass. “What news from the Foxes, First Mate?”
Stix ran her tongue over her teeth, as if contemplating why Vivia had ignored her question. But then her face relaxed, and she said, “Good news, sir. It just came in, actually. Our little pirate fleet captured two more trade ships today. One with Dalmotti grain and the other with Cartorran seeds.”
Oh thank Noden. Seeds were a victory. They would keep Nubrevna fed for years, so long as the land and the weather cooperated. Vivia couldn’t wait to tell her father.
Of course, she showed none of this to Stix.
“Excellent,” she said primly.
“I thought so too.” Stix flashed a sly grin, baring her perfect teeth with the tiny gap in front.
Vivia’s throat tightened. Too good for me. She turned away. “And … the missing ship?”
“Still no word, sir.”
Vivia swore, relieved when Stix winced. That was the reaction she needed. The reaction her father would have earned.
The smallest ship in the Fox fleet had gone quiet two days before. Vivia could only assume the worst. There was nothing to be done for it, though. The Foxes were a secret. A backup plan that she and Serafin had formulated to keep Nubrevna fed. The crews had been hand-selected and sworn to secrecy—they all knew what was at stake. Every one of them had lost someone to famine or to war, so they wanted the Foxes to succeed as badly as Vivia and Serafin did.
Until the scheme was successful, though, no one—especially not the High Council—could know. Piracy was not precisely legal.
“We’ve also had no word from our spies,” Stix said, words even and businesslike. “Whoever was behind the prince’s assassination, it does not appear to be one of the—”
The ground jolted. No warning, just a great lurch of the earth. So hard and so fast that Vivia’s knees cracked. She toppled toward Stix, who toppled backward, arms windmilling. Vivia grabbed her, yanking her upright before she could fall over the parapet. The two soldiers weren’t so lucky. They crashed to the stones.
Then everyone waited, bodies shaking in time to the fading quake. Stix gaped at Vivia, and Vivia gaped at the dam. At the crack that had been growing for decades up its middle.
But the stones held, and eventually Stix spoke: “Earthquake.” The word hummed through Vivia’s body. An impossible word. One that hadn’t plagued Lovats in generations.
One that could, if it happened again, succeed in killing off the city before starvation or overcrowding even got the chance.
“Hye,” Vivia agreed roughly. Her thoughts had scattered once she’d seen the dam was intact, and for a long stretch of time, the world was silent.
She let her eyes drift to Stix. Close enough now that the first mate didn’t have to squint. It was too close—the sort of close that Vivia avoided, for though Stix would never ponder this moment again, Vivia would endlessly ruminate, evaluate, and yearn unrequited.
Then as suddenly as the tremor had hit, as suddenly as Vivia and Stix had pulled each other close, noise an
d movement resumed. Shouts from the soldiers. Shouts from the streets. Vivia hastily released Stix, lurching back a step. Both girls smoothed their shirts, fixed their collars.
“Check the city,” Vivia ordered, “and I’ll check the dam. I want a damage report in two hours. I’ll find you at Pin’s Keep.”
Stix saluted, shaky yet strong. “Hye, sir!” She marched off, the soldiers dutifully following.
For several moments, Vivia eyed the water-bridges. Unlike the dam, they were bewitched by the same powerful witches who had built the under-city all those ages ago. Only magic could keep those massive structures aloft over a valley thousands of feet below.
Vivia couldn’t help worrying, though, as she turned for the door, that if the magic of the underground was dying, then what of the magic above? For after all, whatever happened over …
Happened under too.
* * *
Merik felt like he was falling. As if he’d jumped off a water-bridge in the dead of night, just as his mother had, and now the shadowy valley zoomed in fast. Black skies and cold clouds.
And the Hagfishes waiting, mouths wide to catch him.
Safiya fon Hasstrel is dead.
Cam was still talking. A distant buzz of words, of which only snippets actually slid into Merik’s ears. “Do you think your sister could have destroyed that ship too?” or “Why would she want to?” or “It makes no sense, sir.” Yet Merik scarcely heard.
Safiya fon Hasstrel is dead. The words sifted through him. Numbing and cold. Shrinking the world down to a single, booming chorus in his ears. Safiya fon Hasstrel is dead.
It made no sense. Safi wasn’t the sort of person who died. She was the sort who bent the world to her will. Who kissed the way she lived, with passion, impulse, life. Who smiled in the face of death, a challenge in her eyes, and then laughingly sidestepped it before the Hagfishes could yank her down.
This wasn’t possible. Not again. Not someone else. Noden had already claimed too much.
Merik stumbled for the door. Cam’s cold hands grabbed him. “Sir, sir, sir.” But Merik shook her off and staggered on.
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