Page 45 of Sightwitch
I set off for it, a fresh surge of strength in my step.
This wasn’t funny, and I wouldn’t laugh. Instead, I would find Tanzi, I would find the Sisters, and I wouldn’t delay another moment—
A storm of black kicked into my path. Feathers and must and a wild clacking of beak.
The Rook was not happy.
He pecked and squawked at me. He flew in my face, and no amount of swinging my hands or yelling at him made a difference.
He simply would not let me go.
When his beak chomped down on my nose, I finally gave up.
“What?” I howled, reeling back two steps. “What is wrong?”
I shouldn’t have spoken, because he launched himself at me. This time, I was smart enough to fling up my hands, but he simply bit my forearms instead. Hard enough to draw blood.
I had no choice but to back away. Then finally turn and simply run.
I thought he’d lost his mind. I thought he’d turned on me or been possessed by a ghost orsomething,and now he was going to kill me.
So I scurried back the way I’d come, back downstairs, back toward the Nubrevnan.
Upon reaching the unconscious man, the Rook abruptly stopped his attack. He landed on a table behind me, his wings stretched wide as if to block my way.
Heart drumming in my chest, I sucked in air and gawped at him. “What,” I snapped, “was that for?”
One of his wings dropped, as if …
As if hepointedto the Nubrevnan.
I glanced down. Blood had trickled out sideways around the man, following a gap in the stone tiles and framing his left side.
That couldn’t be healthy. Nor could the way his back scarcely moved when he inhaled.
“No,” I moaned. I didn’t have time for this. The Sisters needed me.
My fist moved to my heart, and seconds skated past. I could heal a man I didn’t know and potentially lose my Sisters, or I could go after them and he could potentially die.
Help the man. Help my Sisters.
Except I realized the debate was pointless. When I had lost my pack, I had lost my healer kit too.
“I’m sorry, the Rook,” I said at last. “I can’t do anything for him, and the Sisters need me. They need us.”
The Rook did not look impressed, and my ire only fanned hotter.
I puffed out my chest. “If I help him, I risk losing Tanzi. Is that what you want?”
A purring of affirmation.
“But I have no healer kit! There’s nothing I can do here!”
He wafted his wings until a breeze wisped over me—and a page flipped off the nearest table.
It landed at my feet, a torn-out sheet from some book on Threadwitches. Written in the margins were numbers with items scribbled beside them.
The numbers were bookcases and shelves, I realized. Then I put it all together: this was an inventory of sorts. A crude, disorganized one, but the system covered almost every paper that my eyes scraped over.
