Page 126 of A Weave of Lies
“I do not want excuses.” Semras lifted her hands. “I want action.”
At once, Estevan took a set of keys from his pocket and fiddled to find the right one. “I never intended to put you in these at all. You gave me an opportunity, so I took it. I meant to remove them that night once we were back, but then …” He picked out one small key from the lot. “Then I realized I had pushed you too far, and while I knew I would never hurt you …you,of course, did not.”
Under the gas lighting, the key in his hand shone with the same iridescence as the cold iron shackles. Its sight repulsed her, but Semras stayed still as the inquisitor approached with it.
“You looked murderous that night. I needed you to accuse me of murder, not kill me yourself,” he continued, sliding the key into the lock. “It was safer for you to stay bound, or else this entire charade would have been for naught. Still, just in case my instincts were wrong, I asked my seeress if …”
Estevan’s voice faded to the back of her mind as she heard a click, then a heavy thud. And then, fresh air hit her hands.
She was free. An amazed, relieved smile slowly bloomed on her face. Semras looked down at her fingers, willing them to flex. They trembled … and stayed still.
Her smile withered. She tried again, and again, and again—and then, she understood. She’d never be truly free ever again.
“What …?” Dropping to his knees before her, the inquisitor grabbed her hands in his. They quivered just as much as hers. “You … you tried to weave while wearing the witch-shackles?”
Gaze fixed on her fingers in the vain, heart-wrenching hope that she’d see them bend at any moment, Semras stayed silent.
Estevan exhaled with a shudder. “… You did. Of course you did. This is … this is entirely my fault. I pushed you too far, I—Void take me,” he murmured, passing his hand over his eyes. “What did I do to you?”
Blood crusted more cuts on her skin than she could count in one glance. A sickly pallor, broken only by red and purple rashes, had spread over her fingers. She couldn’t feel them; days of prolonged contact with the cold iron had numbed them.
They’d never move again as they once did. Time and healing would give some of her skills back, but she’d never weave easily again.
Semras blinked her blurring vision away. “… I wondered the same thing every day I spent in that Crone-forsaken room.”
Estevan froze, then shuddered. “Can … can your weaving fix this?”
“Not … not now. Everything feels … too raw. I’ll do it later,” she lied poorly.
How could she weave on herownhands when she needed both to grab the threads of the Unseen Arras?
The inquisitor searched her eyes for reassurance. His brow creased with sorrow. “You are lying,” he said quietly.
Her lips quivered. “… I can’t.” Semras let out a sob—just one. Just one deserved moment of raw, primal anguish. “N-Not on my own …”
“Could Miss Covenless—?”
She shook her head slowly. “She can barely see the Arras anymore. She can’t, and I can’t, Estevan. I just … can’t. I need a fleshwitch, a highly skilled one, and soon or I’ll … I’ll …”
Estevan brought her hands against his forehead, as if praying to his Radiant Lord would miraculously fix her. “I will bring you one,” he said. “I know of one. She will heal you. Or someone else will, but you will get your hands back if that is the last thing I do, Semras. I swear it.” One after the other, he kissed the backs of her hands.
With a hollow smile, Semras watched him cradle them against his heart. “I don’t trust your promises.” The edge of her words stabbed him, cut him wide. “I will never trust you again, Estevan.” They spilled his guts open.
She watched him release her and step backward. Skin pale, eyes sunken, Estevan looked sick with himself.
He made her sick too.
“Then that will make your next step so much easier.” His lips stretched into a poor imitation of a smile. “Go to Cael. Tell him I killed Tribunal Torqedan. Have him arrest me.”
Anger swelled within her. It felt right—rage could keep her from feeling numb. “Oh, you want to die? You think it will makethis,” she said, presenting her maimed hands, “any better? Are you under some delusions of martyrdom?”
“It is a calculated risk. There is a chance my father, the cardinal, would—”
“Achance? You’d gamble your life on achance?”
“It is just a life,” Estevan muttered. “A single life to save thousands.”
“What about all those who count on you? Your father, your knights, your friends, and—and everyone else!”
