She stretched the rabbit across the stone. Its body was stiff and cold, exactly as she’d told Aeduan it would be. She just hoped the meat hadn’t spoiled.
Only one way to learn.
She rolled up her sleeves. Aeduan’s coat was far too big, and the wool itched. But she felt safer with it on. It smelled like smoke and old sweat. Not a bad smell, just … there.
After she’d rinsed her hands from water in the canteen, she freed her cutlass. While the blade was excellent for cutting off the rabbit’s feet at each joint, it was not good for the second step: a tiny incision across the rabbit’s back.
So absorbed was Iseult in not cutting too deeply and puncturing an organ (thereby guaranteeing that the meat would spoil) that she didn’t feel the Threads approaching until they were almost upon her.
In fact, if she’d waited two breaths longer before reaching out to sense the world’s weave, she would not have noticed the men until it was too late. But thank the Moon Mother, her habit was stronger than her attention on the rabbit.
Six sets of Threads crept toward her, purple tinged with steel gray. A hunger for violence, a desire for pain—and close. Mere seconds away.
Iseult’s mind blanked out. No time to react, no time to plan. The only option before her was flight, so Iseult gripped her cutlass and leaped into the gully, where the substrate was flat and the undergrowth sparse.
The Threads flared with pink excitement and green determination. They moved faster too, launching into sprints behind her. But why, why, why? Who were they and why were they hunting her? Unlike the men Esme had sent, these hunters were definitely not Cleaved. Their Threads were whole and thoroughly focused on hurting Iseult if they caught her.
She kicked her knees higher. Time blurred, the forest streaked. All Iseult saw and all Iseult was, was the gully’s mud floor and the placement of ferns. Of stones. Of anything at all that might slow her.
A man behind her roared something in a language she didn’t know. The Threads flared hotter. Hungrier. A battle cry to cow enemies.
It certainly cowed Iseult. She almost tripped, but somehow her balance prevailed. She punched her heels faster and gripped her cutlass tighter.
Ahead. Trees ending. Sky opening up. The thoughts slashed through her brain, one after another. Unbidden and with no time to examine. No time to plan.
She reached the end of the forest. Her feet pounded onto exposed stone, where water sprayed up. It was the Amonra River, foamy with speed, black with cold. The sort of rapids that even a Waterwitch would avoid—and there was no crossing it.
Iseult veered right. The shore was brutal, rocks and logs and undercut riverbank. She looked back.
A mistake. The men were closer than she’d realized. Close enough for her to see pockmarks and scars and toothless smiles. To see binding Threads oozing between them—a sign they all followed the same command. A sign they were comrades working as one.
Iseult pushed herself harder, her breath coming in short fog-choked gasps. The Amonra Falls hummed ahead. First, a mere tickle at the base of Iseult’s spine. A mist to linger on the horizon. It grew louder with each step, expanding into a heavy rumble in Iseult’s gut, a rain that coated everything in fat droplets.
Stasis, Iseult! Stasis in your fingers and in your toes! But she couldn’t reclaim it. She couldn’t slow, she couldn’t plan. She was against a wall, and it was made of violent men and violent rapids.
This was a wall that Safi would hurdle in a heartbeat, though. No preparing. No worrying. Just action. If Safi were here, she wouldn’t wait. She’d see opportunity and she’d take it.
Stupid as it might seem, Safi had once told Iseult, stupid is also something they never see coming.
Yes, Iseult had answered at the time, and it’s also why I always end up saving your skin.
But hey! A sharp Safi grin. At least there’s a skin to save, Iz. Am I right?
She was right. Moon Mother save her, but Safi was right. Stupid was sometimes the best.
And sometimes, stupid was all that remained.
Iseult tipped her head left as she ran, letting her gaze shoot ahead to where river pounded against the shore. No debris rushed on that choppy surface, for the power of these rapids was too much. The Amonra yanked sticks, leaves, and life down; it did not spit them back up.
Goddess, it would be stupid to go in that river. So stupid.
Act now. Consequences later. Initiate, complete.
It was time. The hunters were lurching out of the trees.
Iseult initiated. Iseult jumped. As the muddy bank fell away and damp air kissed her cheeks, shouts clamored from the forest. Threads collectively brightened with turquoise surprise, crimson rage. Then Iseult reached the peak of her arc and began to fall.
A single sharp thought hit her in that moment. It wasn’t a tangible thought, it wasn’t carved in words to score across her mind, but rather it was a feeling that brightened every piece of her as the black river closed in.
You’ve been here before, the feeling said. And you know what to do.
Her hands moved instinctively to her wool coat. A tug of stiff fingers against the collar, then Iseult’s feet hit the waves. Cold, cold, cold, cold—and ripping her under. Punching all breath from her chest. Tearing all sight and sound and senses.
The Amonra dragged Iseult down.
As she sank below, she wrestled free from the coat. It unfurled above, a distraction as well as a shield to hide Iseult while she flew downstream in a world without breath. A world without control.
TWENTY
After bathing under Lev’s watchful eye, Vaness and Safi were forced to don their filthy, torn clothes.