Page 50 of Witchlight
TWENTY-THREE
Their blood was the wrong color.
Iseult had noticed it as soon as she’d cut into the first raider with her moon scythes. But it wasn’t until now, with the battle won and twenty-seven raiders scattered across the snow, that she could finally see it was not merely blood that was corrupted. Their Threads were the wrong color too.
All of them were cleaving. Just like the blacksmith and his wife and all the countless others she hadn’t been able to save. Every one of these Red Sails possessed faint Severed Threads at the heart of their beings.
“Why have y-you attacked us?” Iseult asked the woman with the pistol. She was the only raider still conscious.
“Because you were in our way.” The woman smiled, revealing teeth coated in blood. Her Threads hummed with a disturbing satisfaction.
“And is that smoke in the distance from you?” Safi clutched her right arm to her side, the pale furs marred with her blood. Red, all of it red, and from a wound that would need tending. “Over there—did you attack others?”
“They had the plague,” the raider answered, as if this explained anything. “So we had to.”
Iseult frowned at the black smoke choking the sky. Then she frowned at Aeduan, who crouched over two raiders. One by one, he was freezing the blood in their veins. Any who were still conscious, he pushed into sleep.
He was tired though. Iseult could see that even from here.
“She’s telling the truth, Iz.” Safi bent closer to Iseult. “Or at least she thinks she is. She really believes whomever they just killed had the plague.”
Iseult’s frown whittled deeper. She supposed it made a tortured sort of sense: the plague had marked the end of the Republic of Arithuania, and burning bodieshadstopped its spread. But the dark blood of these raiders, the Severed Threads mingling across this clearing…
“Why do you think it’s the plague?” Iseult asked.
“Because they have the same pustules. The Raider King told us what to look for, so we do.”
Safi’s expression—and her Threads—turned grim. Cleaving, of course, made pustules. “So the Raider King has sent you to kill anyone with the plague?”
The woman spat shadowed blood onto the snow. Her Threads settled into a stubborn forest green. There was a hesitancy to them, though. A fear, even, that made Iseult think perhaps Ragnor didnotknow how many they were slaughtering to eradicate this so-called plague.
Safi sighed. “You have two choices here. Either you can cooperate with us, and we’ll leave you and these other survivors with healing supplies.” She turned a meaningful glare at the nearly thirty bodies scattered about. “Or you can choosenotto cooperate, and we’ll leave you here with nothing.”
The woman sneered.
“Storm’s coming.” Iseult pointed to the sky. “I d-don’t think you want to be stuck here.”
The woman looked neither worried nor impressed, so Safi gave a lopsided shrug. “Good enough. The gods can’t say we didn’t try.” She turned away, flickers of pain wincing in her Threads. “Come on, Knifey,” she hollered at Aeduan. “We’re leaving these bastards behind.”
Aeduan straightened. His eyes pierced Iseult’s. One heartbeat. Two.Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch.Then his attention skated to the sneering raider.
Her Threads flashed with blue comprehension. “Hells, you’re him, aren’t you? The Raider King’s son. Which makes you two… Oh, this is rich. He’s going to be so happy. He told us to be on the lookout, now here you are.”
Two things happened in that moment. First, Iseult saw the woman’s Threads blare with a new shade, one that spoke of Aether magic and connections spanning miles.
Second: the woman’s whole body locked up. So fast it made her muscles crunch inward like a dead spider. Then shediddie. Iseult saw her Threads snuff out moments before she went limp against the black-striped snow. Iseult spun toward Aeduan. His arm was raised, his fingers flexed as his eyes—now pure red—once more pierced hers from across the bloodied grass and snow.
“What the rut, Knifey!” Safi exclaimed. “We needed her!”
“No,” Iseult said. “He did the right thing, Safi. Look.” She knelt beside the fallen woman and tore the glove from her right hand.
A Witchmark winked into the gray light. A hollow circle with a scripted letter inside. “Voicewitch,” Iseult said.
“Well, shit.” Safi wiped her bloodied blade on the snow. “Shit in agutter, shit on my ancestors. Was she able to send a message before you stopped her?”
“We have to assume so.” Aeduan’s voice was inflectionless. He was the least exerted of their ranks, and also the most detached. But just as Iseult did not need to see a wound to know it was infected, she didn’t need to see Aeduan’s Threads to know he was agitated. Not from the fight, although that certainly contributed…
But by what the Voicewitch had said. The orders she’d described from the Raider King to kill anyone who might be sick. That was his father, after all. A man he’d once followed and trusted.
