As she lay there, thinking and reaching and analyzing, she drifted off.
And the shadow was waiting.
“You’re here! And you’re all healed.” The shadow seemed genuinely pleased by this, and Iseult imagined she clapped in the real world—a real world that Iseult was certain existed. This voice wasn’t just some mad extension of her deepest fears.
“You’re right,” the shadow crooned. “I’m as real as you are. But look—I’ll let you see through my eyes for a moment, just to convince you.”
It was like coming up from a deep dive. Light swam across Iseult’s vision followed by colors—gray and green—and distorted shapes … until finally a shuttering of black, as if the shadow blinked long and slow, and the world materialized. Gray stones, worn and crumbling, met Iseult’s eyes. No, the shadow’s eyes, though which Iseult now saw.
It was like the ruined lighthouse by Veñaza City but rather than sea-soaked beach, this land was covered in rich shades of green. Ivy wound and broke through the walls. Grass tufted at the building’s base.
“Follow me, follow me,” the shadow sang—though it wasn’t as if Iseult could truly follow or move at all. Just as she saw through the shadow’s eyes, she moved in the shadow’s body.
“Where are we?” Iseult asked, wishing she could swivel the shadow’s head and see more than just an arched entry into a round room.
An evening sun—brighter than the one in Nubrevna—beamed in through windows with broken glass, and the shadow aimed for a winding staircase at the back. She moved with a strange, bouncing gait, as if she stayed on the balls of her feet when she moved. As if she might start skipping at any moment.
She did start skipping when she reached the worn stairs. Up, up, up she spun, her gaze on the steps and thoughts silent. When she reached the second floor, she traipsed toward a window with shards still dangling from the iron lattice.
“We’re in Poznin,” the shadow finally answered. “Do you know it? It’s the capital of the once great Republic of Arithuania. But every nation rises and falls, Iseult. Then, eventually, they all rise again. Soon these ruins will flourish into cities, and it will be the other nations that die this time.” As the shadow spoke, she leaned onto the windowsill and a wide avenue slid into view—along with hundreds … No, hundreds upon hundreds of people.
Iseult gasped. The men and women stood in rows, and even in the amber sunset, there was no missing the charred color of their skin. The pure blackness of their eyes.
Or the three Severed Threads drifting over each of their heads.
“Puppeteer,” Iseult breathed.
The shadow girl became very still. As if she held her breath. Then she gave a curt nod that sent the view lurching. “They call me the Puppeteer, yes, but I don’t like it. Would you, Iseult? It sounds so … oh, I don’t know. So frivolous. Like what I do is a game for children. But it isn’t.” She hissed that word. “It’s an art. A masterpiece of weaving. Yet no one will call me Weaverwitch. Not even the King! He was the one who told me I was a Weaverwitch in the first place, yet now he refuses to call me by my true title.”
“Hmmm,” Iseult said, barely listening to the girl’s rambling. She needed to evaluate as much as she could with each flick of the Puppeteer’s eyes toward the Cleaved. Plus, it seemed that the girl couldn’t read Iseult’s thoughts so long as she was too absorbed in her own.
Each row had ten across. Men, women … even the occasional small figure, like an older child. But the Puppeteer’s gaze never lingered on individuals, and Iseult was too busy estimating the army’s size to focus on the few details she could grab.
Iseult had counted up to fifty rows—and was not even halfway down the avenue—when the Puppeteer’s words cut into her awareness: “You’re a Weaverwitch too, Iseult, and once you learn to weave, we’ll change our title together.”
“To … gether?”
“You’re not like other Threadwitches,” the Puppeteer elaborated. “You have a need to change things, and the hate to do it. The rage to break the world. Soon, you’ll see that. You’ll accept what you really are, and when you do, you’ll come to me. In Poznin.”
Hot sickness rose in Iseult’s chest—vile and almost impossible to hide. So she blurted the best lie she could craft. “You s-seem tired. I am so sorry. Is weaving exhausting?”
The Puppeteer seemed to smile. “You know,” she said softly, “you are the first person to ask me that. Breaking Threads wears me out, but it is talking to you that drains me the most. Yet…” She trailed off, her eyes falling shut, and her weariness was palpable as she dipped forward—pressed her forehead against an eye-level iron bar. She sighed, as if the metal soothed. “It is worth the exhaustion to talk to you. The king has been so angry with me lately, though I do everything he demands. Talking to you is the only bright spot in my day. I have never had a friend before.”
Iseult didn’t respond. Any thought or movement would betray what pulsed deep inside her: horror.
And worse, a slight digging of pity.
Fortunately, the shadow girl didn’t notice Iseult’s reticence, for her talking never slowed.
“I will be gone for the next few days, Iseult. My King has given me a task that will drain my power. I imagine I’ll be too tired to find you after that. But,” she said with a promising sort of emphasis, “when I am fully restored, I’ll come to you again.”