Page 68 of Witchlight
On the Raider King’s desk, her stew waited beside letters and maps and drawings and ledgers. A compact version of Eron fon Hasstrel’s table in the dining room—and all of it just sitting there. Right where Iseult could read anything, coulddestroyanything if she wanted to.
The Raider King is not a man to be trifled with. He is the greatest strategic mind of the last millennium.
Yes. Iseult believed that now, having seen the numbers that had swelled this city into a bloated corpse. And also having seen how easily Ragnor deflected her attempts to speak. Surely he knew why she had surrendered. Surely hesensedshe had come here to kill him. Yet he had “opened” his house to her, then walked away.
She looked down. The collar blocked her view of her feet, but she didn’t need to see her toes to know she’d found stasis. In four long steps, she carried herself to Ragnor’s desk. Here was a map of all his forces, laid out exactly as she’d found them on her ride into the city. But now she could count exact numbers, study exact placements.
Either Ragnor had left all of this out for her because he wanted her to trust him… or this was a trap Iseult couldn’t yet see. It didn’t matter which. If he wanted her to study it, then study it she would.Evaluate your opponent, analyze your terrain.
She sat on the Raider King’s stool, a humble throne of creaking pine. Then she withdrew the book still inside her satchel—the one Leopold had left for her, filled with what he’dthoughtwould be the Raider King’s strategies and plans.
“Let’s see how accurate you were, Leopold.”
Iseult got to work.
Safi had no idea how much time had passed when she awoke again. All she knew was that the room felt smaller, darker. There was only the one lantern, still burning, which cast an orange glow over the odd wooden room.
“You’re awake.”
Safi twisted, swallowing at a mouth that was too dry. And there he was: Merik Nihar, hunched on a stool and staring at her as ifshewere the ghost instead of he.
“Am… I dreaming?” she rasped.
“Not a very good one, if you are.” He smiled, but it was a pained thing that pulled at the burn scars all along the side of his face. “We haven’t found your Threadsister or the Carawen monk. But my people are still searching.”
“Your people,” she tried to say, but all that came out was coughing. Vicious rattles that sounded as bad as they felt, churning up from her abdomen.
Merik moved close, slipping a hand behind her. He helped her sit with a familiar strength. A water bag reached her lips several moments later, and she gulped it back greedily.
Never had water tasted so good.
“Not too much,” Merik murmured, stealing the water away. “I’m under orders to hydrate you slowly.” He set the bag on a second stool beside her bed—althoughbedwas an exaggeration. It was more like a stack of thick furs and rugs.
There was a child’s tale Mathew had once told Safi, about a mouse living at the base of a tree. That was what she felt now—like that mouse. Because everything in this room was mystical and storylike, from the rushes on the floor to the crude chest beside the door hung with furs… And most of all, to the scarred prince seated on a stool beside her.
Here he was ruling over a settlement that had clearly not been assembled by hands, but rather by magic, while people of mismatched backgrounds obeyed him as if they’d known him forever and would follow him through hell-fires.
She leveled a gaze onto his face. He was so much thinner now. Gaunt, even. Yet strangely, illogically, it suited him. Now he looked less like a boy and more like a man wizened by a world that had fallen apart around him. His eyes had always held a weight in them—the weight of a crown, the weight of people depending on him—but now they held wisdom too.
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
“And I thought you were dead.”
“I’m close enough to it.” She tried for a smile, but she felt it failing her. Frizzing with falseness across her face.
“As am I,” he answered.True, true, true.“But you will survive your wound, Safiya fon Hasstrel, thanks to our Baedyed healer. She was able to repair the muscles in your arm. However…” A pause. A swallow. “There will be scars on the skin.”
Safi lifted a single eyebrow. “Scars do not bother me, Prince.”
“I see.”
It was like watching a storm clear at sea. For the first time since she’dawoken, Merik seemed to settle beside her. The waves that tormented him softened toward calm.
“How are you here?” The question emerged from Safi’s throat like a breeze.
“It’s a long tale, Domna.”
“And I have time for listening.”
