Page 49 of Witchlight
Two men at the front split apart to try to flank Safi and Iseult. Fools. She and Iseult had been trained for this. The reactions lived inside them, written onto their bones by a Firewitch general who accepted no failure. It was a dance, a rhythm, a gliding arrangement of steps that required two partners. And although it might have been months since Safi had fought with Iseult, they were still Threadsisters. Still sun and moon, light and shadow, two halves forever orbiting each other.
The raiders reached the girls.
Initiate.Safi ducked for one man’s knees with her shoulder. He went down while her blade went up.Complete.Iseult bounded over Safi, both moon scythes extended toward the second raider.
Neither man had time to react before steel sliced through and blood sprayed. Hot blood that seemed to sizzle the instant it was exposed to air—as did the organs oozing out with it.
Their bodies hit the snow, but two more raiders were already leaping up from the grass. Safi and Iseult twirled toward each other. Iseult swiped with her mountain bat claw at the first. Safi attacked with steel at the second.
And somehow, as the incoming raider growled at Safi with savagery, as his blood-smeared cutlass swung at Safi’s head, she felt her own sword become the truest steel that had ever sung. It was as if her magic responded in that moment, reaching down her arm, her fingers, sliding into the hilt and blade.
She’d bound her witchery before. First, when she’d made the Truth-lens in Marstok. It had required careful study, using the bookUnderstanding Threadsto make the correct knots and braids, loops and weavings.
Second, when she’d turned the lens into a necklace. She’d only had intuition and memory then. It had been slow work, but satisfying.
And now, here she was a third time, and it required almost no effort at all. Here were the Threads of her power; here was the Arlenni Loop, exactly as she’d once seen it on the page. Then the Vergedi knot—harder to make, but stronger in the end.
All of this happened in the space between seconds. The stutter between heartbeats. Then leather and fur split apart, followed by muscle and bone. With a single, frictionless movement, Safi carved off the man’s head.
He went down, his head following a split second later—and with the same expression of shock scored onto it that Safi must be wearing as well. How had she done that? And without any thought at all, only instinct?
No time to wonder or contemplate. Another raider struck, lashing out with a long, pointed blade. But when his steel connected with Safi’s parry, the blade snapped in two.
This was as unexpected as the decapitation—although it shouldn’t have been. She’d imprinted her magic onto the steel. Now it was a blade so true, nothing could stand in its way.
Safi kicked the man in the groin. Flung a flat fist to his chin. Then she levered her leg behind his, and a heartbeat later, the man hit the ground beside his fellows.
The snow in the clearing had turned red. “Incoming,” Iseult yelled, darting away from their miniature battlefield as another clump of raiders tumbled from the grass.
Three froze mid-stride, then collapsed. Safi didn’t need to look back toknow Aeduan had joined them. His magic, strangely weak before, seemed to have returned in full force. Which was why, rather than careen directly for the remaining five raiders as Iseult was doing, Safi cut left toward an exposed flank where raiders coalesced in the grass.
Two toppled toward her. They were easily dispatched with her sword that could apparently slice through spine and steel now.True, true, true.
But that was when a third raider whom Safi hadn’t noticed—a man who must have come at her from behind—sprang. The force of his tackle crumpled them both to the earth. Knocked her sword from her grasp. She rolled and wiggled, but her winter furs slowed her.
The man’s face was the only part of him Safi could see. It was thick with stubble. His breath—hot, foul—panted over her. He was trying to pin her to the ground, both his hands pushing her arms into cold tundra.
So Safi let him. For one breath, she relaxed fully and let him get into the position hethoughtwould give him power.False,her magic seemed to laugh.False, false, lies.Then the breath had ended and the man was leering down. Spit fell from his lips. He wasn’t much older than she.
Safi grinned at him before bracing her feet against the man’s, then hefting up her hips and flipping him sideways. He fell, and Safi used the moment to roll the other way. He grabbed for her legs. His fingers clamped onto her calf, and he tried to drag her back. But she had her sword now.
Pivot. Swing. It cut through the arm that held her. At the elbow, clean as a butcher’s knife through fresh meat.
He screamed. His blood sprayed.
And it was then, in the frantic moments while Safi scrabbled to her feet and another raider sprinted toward her, that she saw something she hadn’t noticed on the other raiders: this man’s blood wasn’t truly red. It was too dark. It should have been scarlet upon the snow, but instead it was almost black.
He was cleaving.
No time to assess what that might mean for this fight. The next raiders had arrived, and Iseult was facing a woman who was just as nimble and fast as she was. Worse, she was drawing a Firewitched pistol from her belt. She aimed. Safi dove. The single shot cracked out.
Pain lanced across Safi’s left shoulder. Down to her fingers, up into her skull. Had she been holding her sword in this hand, she would have dropped it. As it was, though, nothing vital was damaged—so despite pain bright and burning, the fight still pumped through her like a sunrise.
Safi ran for the woman with the pistol as the woman tried to reload.The cold made her slow. Or maybe the intensity of it all made Safi fast. Either way, she reached the woman before the pistol winched high again.
“Big mistake,” Safi snarled, and in two arcs of her blade, she carved the pistol from the raider’s grasp—and carved away half her hand too. Then she aimed the sword at the woman’s neck.
Iseult, her cheeks flushed and blood-splattered, now staggered to Safi’s side. “Get on the ground,” she ordered the raider. “Now. Or we will put you there.”
