Page 34 of Witchlight
He nodded against her.
“Good.” Relief poured through Safi now, mixing with her magic—and prickling more tears into her eyes. “Just promise that after you find Lev and Zander, you’ll come marching right back to me. After all, who else is going to nag me when I don’t have a proper escort?”
Caden didn’t laugh, nor even smile. Instead he laid his hands over Safi’s. “I will, my Empress.”
“Toward death with wide eyes,” Safi murmured as she pressed her lips to his forehead.
“All clear,” he answered softly. “All clear.”
SIXTEEN
Snow fell, thick and white. Iseult’s boots left tracks as she trudged through the forest toward the Nomatsi encampment a mile away. Caden’s too, five paces behind her. His Threads were alight with nerves, and she could hardly blame the man. Navigating a deadly trail toward a tribe of people who might decide to kill him instead of letting him join?
Oh, yes. She’d be nervous too.
Actually, Iseultwasnervous. She had only visited the tribe three times in the last four weeks. Not merely because the Solfatarra breathed poison nearby and she had to follow this Nomatsi trail through it—a trail that was constantly changing—but because for all her newfound understanding of her mother, things were not suddenly easy.
Plus, there was Alma, and what was Iseult supposed to say to a girl who’d died by her hand and then come back to life by her hand too?
“Shit,” Caden yelped behind her. “Is that abeartrap?”
“It is.” Iseult wanted to laugh. Instead, she kept her face flat. “And there are more lurking in the shadows. Stay close, Hell-Bard.”
“Right.” He tugged his wool cloak to him. Then shifted so his heavy pack rested differently. Then seemed to realize Iseult was already striding onward without him, so he scooted after, plowing up fresh snow.
The encampment was quiet by the time they reached it. The sun was setting; most of the Nomatsis were in their tents, preparing end-day meals. Smoke coiled toward a snow-clouded sky. Horses snuffed and pawed, layered beneath blankets. Goats bleated.
Iseult had timed this arrival well. It had been challenging enough to convince Alma and Gretchya to accept Caden as a guard; she was absolutely not up to the task of convincing the entire tribe.
She found Gretchya’s tent, the largest at the center of the encampment. A fresh pot of borgsha simmered, oozing out spicy, fatty scents that slithered over Iseult as she shoved inside. Lanterns flickered near Gretchya at the clay pot of stew; Alma worked at a traveling desk covered in gemstones.
Both women looked up at Iseult’s arrival. Then their attentions quickly latched on to the man following just behind.
Caden looked absurd inside the tent. He was a tall man by Cartorran standards, and even more so by Nomatsi standards. His Threads, though, were what really shrank the tent down three sizes. The erratic newness of his magic, fiery and fierce. The sputtering pale discomfort of being in a place he’d never expected to be. The green determination encasing all the other shades because although he hadn’t expected to be here, he would make the most of it.
There were also bolts of white fear. A sign he knew perfectly well that his emotions were visible to these women. A sign he wished it were not so. He might be used to Iseult, but strangers reading his mind too?
Iseult couldn’t blame Caden for such feelings; it was howmostpeople felt when meeting a Threadwitch and one of myriad reasons Nomatsis were so hated across the Witchlands.
“Welcome.” This was Alma, rising from the desk, because she was ever the diplomat—and also, the more adept at fashioning her Threadwitch face into the expected emotions. Were they her real feelings? Iseult still didn’t know. But at least now, Iseult no longer let her confusion bother her.
Alma swept toward Caden, her Threadwitch black gown twirling and sucking up all light. He had paused at the ring of stools that always fill a Threadwitch’s home. “I am called Alma,” she said in Dalmotti. “And this is Gretchya. Your bag—I can take it.”
Caden bobbed his head, the discomfort quavering toward a teal certainty in his Threads. “Caden fitz Grieg. And I can handle the bag. It’s heavy.” He did let it slide to his feet. Then squared his body toward Gretchya and did exactly as Iseult had taught him: with his hands at his sides, he bowed and said in smooth, lilting Nomatsi, “Thank you for welcoming me to your tribe.”
The reaction was instant. Alma smiled—a real one, Iseult suspected—and Gretchya’s posture at the pot relaxed. She had not wanted an outsider to join them. But the truth was Gretchyacouldn’tsay no. Caden’s presence here was a favor to Her Imperial Majesty of Cartorra, and that Imperial Majesty of Cartorra had thrust so much coin, food, weapons, and horses onto this makeshift tribe that Gretchya felt indebted to her very Threadwitch core.
Gretchya dropped her stirring spoon and wiped her hands on her gown. Then she approached Caden in the same way Alma had.
“Welcome.” This was in Dalmotti. “Sit, and we will feed you, Caden.”She glanced now at Iseult, her face carved into its usual Threadwitch implacability. “You too, Iseult. We have much to discuss with this visitor, and the night could run long.”
The conversation that followed went better in many ways than Iseult had prepared for. Caden’s Threads settled into a calmness that spoke well of his adaptability. She’d known the man had been sent on countless missions across the Witchlands, to strange situations ranging from conning a Truthwitch out of coins in Dalmotti to capturing that same Truthwitch in the Pirate Republic of Saldonica. But he’d been so consumed by grief these last weeks—and his new, unsteady magic—that Iseult had forgotten this other side of him.
The Chiseled Cheater,Iseult kept thinking as she watched him turn on the charm in much the way Safi or Mathew would. He had a mission again; it would hopefully bring him to his friends.
Gretchya and Alma could interpret Caden’s Threads too, and although they themselves might not wear any Threads Iseult could see, she knew her mother well enough to sense Gretchya was warming to Caden as they sat on their stools and pored over a map of the Witchlands.
“The River Tine will get you south,” Caden murmured in Dalmotti, “but it is usually iced over here, where blizzards funnel out from the Windswept Plains—although you should have almost a full month before that happens. Winter comes more slowly in the south.”
