Page 28 of Witchlight
The girls and their horses retraced their route. Back to the main road, back to the fork, back toward the crowded lodge, where hundreds of Threads coalesced like a quilt upon the horizon.
When the bridge over the dark-watered moat to the lodge came into view, one set of crimson, furious Threads stood out: Caden fitz Grieg.
Ever since three searches of the Solfatarra had failed to turn up his Thread-family, Zander and Lev, the Hell-Bard had become a walking firepot. And he’d taken to expressing his frustration at anyone who so much as looked at him wrong… which was, more often than not, Safi.
It didn’t help either that Caden’s Firewitchery, which had been culledfrom him by the Hell-Bard Loom, was now returned. He and countless other Hell-Bards were suddenly brimming with powers they hadn’t felt or used in years.
He spotted Safi across the drawbridge and kicked into a canter her way. His Threads pulsed like storm clouds. “How many times are you going to do this?” he demanded once she was in earshot. “I realize you’ve no concern for your life,Your Imperial Majesty,but have some concern for mine.”
“I didn’t ask to be an empress,” Safi retorted.
“And I didn’t ask to be your guard, but here we are.”
And this,Iseult thought,is why you should have spoken to Caden sooner. She had heard this argument so many times in the past month, she could now recite it by heart. Next, Caden would say,If you leave the lodge—
“If you leave the lodge,” Caden barked, twisting his horse into step beside Safi, “you need a square of Hell-Bards around you. That is the rule.”
“And the rule is stupid. I can handle myself. Besides, I have Iseult with me.” What Safi didn’t add was what they all knew:And she can easily kill almost anyone.
“Ah yes,” Caden said, taking on a calm, thoughtful tone. “The other half of the precious, irreplaceable Cahr Awen.”
Iseult sighed. She had better things to do than waste her time and energy watching Safi and Caden rehash the same argument. Especially since Safi’s own temper was fueled by grief. She knew what she had to do—and she absolutely didn’t want to do it.
Iseult spurred Cloud into a canter. The horse’s hooves clattered into a three-beat rhythm on the road, and neither Safi nor Caden noticed her departure. The Threads that bound them had turned fiery with mutual irritation, mutual unspoken pain. There was little space in their Threads for anything else.
Iseult did not look back.
FOURTEEN
Safiya fon Hasstrel knew that her pacing bothered her uncle. But if she didn’t pace, then all this energy wriggling in her body was going to come out through her fists. Back, forth, back, forth across the long room that had once held feasts and feasters, but now held all the missives, tomes, and ledgers necessary to run an empire. The dining table that stretched almost thirty paces was now invisible beneath maps of the empire—and, more importantly, maps of Poznin.
Thosewere the maps that interested her. Every day, more figurines were added to them, just as every day more were added to the area representing the Solfatarra. And wherever those figurines were placed, corresponding images would appear on smaller Aetherwitched maps that were given to the spies or soldiers who needed them.
Understandably, these maps were closely guarded, because they revealed not only Ragnor’s troops but Eron’s as well.
“Safi, are you listening to me?” Eron demanded when she reached the midpoint of her usual path alongside the windows overlooking a courtyard.
“No,” she admitted, even as her magic whispered,False.She always listened—sometimes she even cared. But when she’d told her uncle she had no plans to be Empress, she had meant it. It was bad enough being the Cahr Awen; she couldn’t doboth.
She frowned up at a portrait above the central window. It showed Henrick’s mother, a woman with a comparable underbite to her son’s. “Do you think,” she mused, “the artisttriedto emphasize her jaw that way or was he just bad at shading?” She glanced at her uncle. “You knew the woman, yes?”
“Godsdammit,Safi.” Eron hauled to his feet, and Safi felt a twinge of shame at the stiffness in his rise. At the grunt of exertion he tried to hide, but couldn’t swallow back.
Turn around,she willed at him.Turn around.
He didn’t turn around.
Scowling, Safi planted her hands on the table opposite him and forced herself to recite, word for word, everything he’d said: “The Carawen monks and their new Abbot Lizl will leave their Monastery in one week—although only if the snows continue to hold off. You would almost prefer the snows arrive, however, and slow them, because at this point, we do not have a reliable supply chain from Ontigua. Thus, when the monks do arrive, we will be forced to ration.”
For several moments, the only sound was the crackle of the fire in the two hearths at either end of the room. Then Eron matched Safi’s scowl—the same slouch to his brow, the same sideways curl of his lips, and the same thoughtful gleam in his Hasstrel blue eyes. Clearly she had learned this expression fromhim,and that only made her own scowl sink deeper.
“The problem with our Ontiguan supply chain is the Hell-Bards,” Eron continued, pointing shakily toward the map next to the stack Safi needed to pull from. “With half of them leaving the service, our forces are—”
“Weakened to the point of useless. Yes, Uncle.” Safi straightened. “I know that’s why you sent the Bloodwitch on his special errand.”
“And if Habim and Mathew do not succeed on their offensive here…” Eron stretched toward another map, using a quill to gesture at the Sirmayans. “Then we will be on tight rations the entire winter. Which is why you must return to Praga. You and Iseult, before the Carawens can reach us.” Eron wiped at his brow. His skin was too pale. He needed to sit again, and his scowl was now shifting toward one of personal frustration. He was glad to be alive, but he was not yet accustomed to the body the acid-thick dungeon had left behind.
True.
