Page 66 of Witchlight
It was exactly what Safi needed to hear. It didn’t quell the Cahr Awen souls, but it did at least quell her own. Merik was here, Merik was true. He knew how to find Iseult and Aeduan, and Safi could have faith that hewould. It was safe for her to sink back into sleep now and let the waves of Veñaza City heal her.
She closed her eyes. The woven ceiling vanished. The hands pressing on her chest withdrew.
Merik had spent most of his life trying to control the world around him. He could look back and see how this behavior had arisen in him. When your mother takes her own life, your sister blames you for it, then your father sends you away because your magic isn’t strong enough…
Yes, it was easy to look back and say,Ah, no wonder I grabbed on to anything that would obey me. And no wonder I was so angry when the world refused to listen.
Safiya fon Hasstrel had been one of the first people who’d refused to listen. She had not, however, been the last. Nothing and no one Merik had met after Safi had followed his plans. And rather than accept this fact, he’d spent all that time seeing only what he’d wanted to see and never accepting what truly lay before him.
He didn’t like thinking back to that version of himself. He didn’t like realizing… and thencountinghow many people he’d harmed by being inflexible or letting his temper win. His greatest regret of all, though, was how he’d treated the boy Cam, who’d been nothing but loyal and true. Merik, in his stupid, almosthatefulcertainty, had refused to see what was actually right in front of him. With Cam, with Vivia, with his own awful hunger for revenge fastened onto the wrong enemy.
Now here Merik was, once more forced to accept that he had no control—that as much as he’dwantedto see only clear skies, Noden had actually prepared many waves and storms to fling his way. If he didn’t bend like the palm trees of the Nihar lands, then Merik was going to break.
An empress. Here, in the middle of his secret camp—and claiming she was also half of the Cahr Awen.SurelyNoden was laughing at him.
“The raiders ran off,” Birdy said, leaning against Merik’s desk in that slouchy way only a young man could. All sharp angles and lines. “Soon as Rora came down out of the sky, her storms goin’, they ran.”
“Retreated,” Ulga inserted, an edge to her voice. “Theyretreated.” She tried so very hard to be a proper lieutenant to Merik and his makeshift forces. It annoyed her to no end that Birdy didn’t care. “We watched until they were gone, sir, and then we watched a bit longer. We returned here once we were sure they weren’t doubling back.”
“And Aurora?” Merik asked. “Where is she now?”
“Gettin’ fed.” Birdy grinned. He found it hilarious to watch Aurora eat since the entire affair involved a lot of mess, a lot of slobbering, and a lot of whining afterward for cuddles.
“Good.” Merik nodded at Birdy. Then at Ulga too. “Thank you both.” Despite their age, they had become two of his closest advisors—ifadvisorswas the right term for the ragged crew who helped him. For weeks, the Raider King had not noticed Merik in Poznin… until one day, all the forces had moved in. From outside of the city, they’d shoved in like ants discovering a forgotten carcass. Merik had barely gotten his new people out before the whole of the crumbling capital had been overrun.
Yet rather than flee, they had dug into the wet forests east of the river. Revan had found a tunnel near the Puppeteer’s tower. Following it had led them into this forest, into a strange place where the trees had been woven into structures and no one who might fly overhead would spy them.
It seemed too perfect to be real. As if Noden had created these buildingsjustfor Merik to find. Some of the trees even looked recently woven, their branches green and pliant.
So Merik and his people had stayed.
After all, so many of Merik’s new people had families trapped in the Puppeteer’s cruel stasis or still loyal to the Raider King. They wouldn’t leave, and he wouldn’t leave without them. So he had named this placeLast Holdout,and everyone had thanked their assorted gods for the safety of these strange trees.
Merik’s base of operations—his captain’s cabin—was like all the other buildings here: a crude assemblage of woven branches, roots, and vines. He had layered it with canvas and furs and whatever else he could find to keep out winter and wetland. Then he’d done the same to all the buildings, packing soil and dirt into walls and layering dried rushes across the earth.
Merik had rushes on his floor now too, and a brazier burned in the corner beside a mound of furs that made the space moderately comfortable. His greatest luxury, however, was a large desk salvaged from the city, upon which he’d laid out maps. Each day, he updated the maps as new people arrived at Last Holdout.
He also updated them as his nightly forays into the city afforded new intelligence on the Raider King’s forces.
“Where’s Sky?” Birdy asked. “And Loulou?”
“They,” came a new voice, sanguine and cocksure, “are already back.” Sky shoved into the tent, dressed in a wintery thick camouflage like theBaedyeds. Loulou—one of those Baedyeds, whose real name was Loued—shoved in behind Sky. He was a short man, stocky and square jawed. His thick fringe of black eyelashes and glossy black curls softened him toward a beauty that Merik suspected Sky was slightly in love with.
And that Loulou was completely oblivious to, given he was ten years her senior.
With their powers, they were easily Merik’s most important advisors. “We saw where the horses went,” Loulou said in Marstoki, flipping his right hand toward Merik—and as such, flashing his Witchmark to the room: a square for Earth with an ox horn for Herdwitchery.
“In the…otherpart,” Sky added. She spoke a rougher Marstoki, recently learned because her Wordwitchery sponged up new languages as easily as the earth around them sponged up water. “We walked in a few hundred paces too, just to be sure, but there were no hoofprints. No horses, and definitely no people.”
Loulou nodded. “I could find only the usual wild animals willing to exist in that… place.”
Merik felt his breath expel at those words.That place. The other part.If Last Holdout and its unnatural buildings were strange, theother partof the forest was far stranger. It was an area in the east where the air felt wrong and night’s shadows lurked long after the sun had risen each day. Merik had been there once, just to see why his people were so afraid—whythosetrees frightened them when Last Holdout did not… And he had promptly rushed back out again.
So if Iseult and the Bloodwitch were in there, then it would not be easy to find them. He twisted his attention back to Ulga and Birdy. “And you saw no signs of a monk or Nomatsi woman with the retreating raiders?”
“No, sir.” Ulga shook her head emphatically while Birdy’s face scrunched up momentarily. Then he too wagged his head. “Naw, no one that looked like prisoners with ’em.”
Sighing, Merik massaged his temples. Dramatic flourishes marked the corners of his map, while the city itself had been drawn with unnecessary detail. But who was he to tell Revan to keep it simpler? Who was he to deny distraction to a boy who just wanted to find his mother somewhere inside all those remaining Cleaved? Plus, the boy made good maps, so long as Merik had the patience to wait for them.
