You traveled two weeks without anyone to stand guard, her conscience nagged.
Yes, she argued with herself as she massaged feeling back into her arm, but I don’t have to do that anymore. She could use every resource available now, and the Bloodwitch was exactly that: a resource. A tool.
A gift.
Iseult shuddered, recalling Esme’s words. The Puppeteer had killed those men to “help” Iseult, and not for the first time, Iseult wished she had someone to help her fight Esme.
Goddess, she would take anything at this point—surely someone out there knew about the Dreaming and Puppeteer-controlled Cleaved.
Weaverwitches like us, Esme had said—and Iseult rubbed her numb arm all the harder. She was not like Esme. She was not like Esme.
Stasis, she commanded herself. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.
Once her arm felt human again, Iseult scooted out into the dawn, relieved she had a task to keep her occupied. After checking that her cutlass was strapped on and her salamander cloak—or rather, Aeduan’s salamander cloak—was fastened tight, she slipped between the nearest groaning pines. While she walked, she clutched at her Threadstone.
I’m coming, Safi. For several breaths, while she gripped the ruby tight, the frost that lived in Iseult’s shoulders melted. Crumbled beneath a wave of something warm. Something that expanded in her stomach and pressed against her lungs … Hope, she realized eventually. Faith that she and Safi would be reunited.
On Iseult’s next footstep, a silver taler clinked against her knuckles, bound to the same leather cord as the Threadstone. Aeduan had poked a hole in the stained silver as easily as if it were paper, and the double-headed eagle was now warm against Iseult’s fingertips. Her hand fell away. She walked faster, her footsteps squishing on the damp earth.
By the time she returned to the mossy overhang with a rabbit from her snare, the Bloodwitch was awake and sitting cross-legged on the rock. His eyes were closed, his hands resting on his knees as he meditated.
Iseult had read about the practice in her book on the Carawen Monastery. The silence and the stillness allowed a monk to separate his mind from his body.
Iseult had tried it once, but with absolutely no success. She already fought so hard to separate herself from her emotions—if she got rid of her thoughts too, what would be left?
When Aeduan gave no indication he’d noticed Iseult’s return, she slipped quietly into the overhang. She shrugged free of the salamander cloak and rolled up her sleeves, ready to start skinning the rabbit.
“No time.”
Iseult flinched. She hadn’t heard the Bloodwitch approach—yet unlike what he did when caught unawares, Iseult went very still. The bruise at her throat, just above the collarbone, was all the warning she needed to never startle him again.
When Aeduan had said he would kill her in Lejna, she hadn’t believed him. When he’d said he would kill her last night, she had.
“It’s easier to skin the rabbit while it’s fresh—”
“It can wait a few hours.” His Dalmotti was hoarse with sleep.
“The meat will spoil.”
“Then you will catch another,” he countered. “We need to get as far as we can before the heat of the day grows too intense.”
“Why?” Iseult asked, but the Bloodwitch ignored her, and in less than a minute, he had cleared the campsite. Everything was gathered, folded, and tucked neatly into Iseult’s satchel. Then he swung it onto his back, ready to set out.
Iseult simply observed. He moved so fast. So efficiently, his witchery clearly propelling him to a speed and grace no man could match.
She itched to know how it worked. Itched to ask him how it felt when such power took hold—and if it was true that his magic was bound to the Void. Instead, though, she said nothing at all.
They hiked for hours, Aeduan always there, paces behind. He refused to walk in front, clearly expecting Iseult to stab him in the back. Or perhaps this was a test to see how much she trusted him.
Either way, Iseult went along with it. For now.
The Bloodwitch used single, hard words to guide her. One moment, they would be tromping through a mucky floodplain, and the next, he would order her to veer right and clamber back out.
“Due east,” he would abruptly say. Or, “More south.” Iseult never knew if the Bloodwitch changed his course because Safi had changed hers, or if Safi’s scent came … and went … and then disappeared again, leaving Aeduan to follow as best could. He certainly stopped every few minutes to close his eyes and sniff the air.
Then, when his eyelids would lift, his irises would burn crimson for a breath. Perhaps two.
After half a day of ruddy bark and dark needles brushing past, the pines grew smaller, giving way to hardwood saplings. Oaks took hold, silver trunked and surrounded by ferns and white asphodel. The Amonra River, wide and dark, churned nearby.
Iseult knew from the map tucked in her satchel, as well as from her lessons with Mathew and Habim, that soon, the forest would give way entirely. The land would drop into a misty gorge filled with thick underbrush and thicker chimney-stack stones. The river would drop too at the towering Amonra Falls.
Here, the Marstoks had faced off against the Nubrevnans twenty years before. Here, fire had chased families from their homes, and Nubrevna had ultimately lost. One more nation to add to the list.
Before Nubrevna, it had been Dalmotti. Before Dalmotti, it had been Marstok. For centuries, this peninsula had changed hands, and for centuries, no one had ever fully won—or ever fully lost.