Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

Run, my child, run.

* * *

After stretching her Threadwitchery senses as far as they could reach, and upon realizing no other Cleaved or hunters or life of any kind lurked nearby, Iseult sawed herself free from the net.

She hit the ground with a thump that she barely managed to roll into, then explored the area inch by inch. All signs pointed to a Nomatsi tribe having recently passed through. They’d made a sprawling camp in the woods, and judging by the traps and the tracks and the supplies scattered throughout, they had left in a hurry.

Too much of a hurry to disable their Nomatsi road, yet whatever had sent them fleeing, it was gone now. So Iseult grabbed anything useful she could find, grateful she wouldn’t have to meet anyone. Wouldn’t have to prove she was as Nomatsi as they were.

As she searched, she made a mental list of what she needed. Oil for my cutlass. A whetstone. More portable eating utensils. A larger rucksack to hold it all.

She moved deeper into the camp, pausing every few steps. Stretching out her awareness and feeling for any Threads, for any living.

It was the first lesson Habim had ever drilled into Iseult: to constantly—constantly—make note of who was around her. Sometimes he would follow her, just to see how long it took her to notice him trailing behind. Slinking in closer. Slipping a blade from his belt.

The first time he’d done it, she hadn’t noticed until he was almost upon her. It was his Threads that had given him away in the end. Yet he hadn’t expected her to sense him at all, and Iseult had realized in that moment that she had an advantage.

She could see the weave of the world. At any moment, she could retreat inside herself and simply feel who was around her. What Threads twirled where, which people felt what, and how it might or might not connect to her.

She practiced that awareness. She became obsessed with it, really, and retreating into the weave every few minutes eventually became a natural instinct. Her range grew wider too. The more she reached, the farther and farther she found her Threadwitchery senses could go.

By the tenth time that Habim had tracked Iseult through the Veñaza City streets, she was able to notice him a full block away—and then sneak into an alley before he could catch her.

Today, in this abandoned campsite, Iseult moved no differently. Every few heartbeats, she sensed the texture of the forest. The placement of any Threads.

No one was near.

So piece by piece, Iseult found what she needed. Kicked under stones or hidden beneath grass—any forgotten item she deemed useful was stuffed into her satchel. Firewitched matches, a cooking spit, a ceramic bowl, and a tiny whetstone.

But the best discovery of all was an abandoned reed trap in a nearby creek. Iseult dizzily dragged it free to find three graylings and a trout flapping inside. She scaled them. She cleaned them. Then she set out to find shelter against the coming rain.

A lip of limestone was the first spot she discovered, and with the remains of a fire left behind, she deemed it as good enough as any for a campsite. Just in time too, for rain was slicing under the overhang, feeding the moss and vines that had crept inside the tiny shelter. Every few minutes, lightning cracked. Flashed over the washed-out campfire that Iseult now coaxed to life.

Iseult cooked a grayling, her eyes unfocused as she watched the skin blacken. It wasn’t until she eased the fish off the fragile flame that she realized she’d lost her coins. For three cracks of lightning, she debated what to do.

She could leave them wherever they might be. Except Mathew’s words whispered, There’s no predicting what might come, and money is a language all men speak.

Fine. Back she would have to go. First, though, she would eat her grayling. Moist, delicious, fresh, she devoured it in seconds. Then she cooked and ate the second fish with a bit more care, a bit more attention to pleasure.

Eventually, the rain eased to a drizzle, so after cooking the remaining two fish—for later consumption—she doused the fire and retraced her steps. All the way back to the bear traps.

All the way back to the Bloodwitch.

For several long minutes, Iseult examined him. He was clearly unconscious, stretched flat across the mud. His clothes were sodden and bloodied. His leg was a shredded mess.

A thousand questions scurried through Iseult’s mind. Yet none were so bright as the command: Run.

She didn’t move, though. Didn’t even breathe, and without Safi there to guide her, without Safi’s Threads to show her what she should feel, Iseult could only wonder why her lungs bulged against her ribs. Why her heart hammered so fast.

The sack of coins waited at the clearing’s heart. Even with the rain having washed away parts of the scene, Iseult could make out what steps the Bloodwitch had taken. She saw tracks where he’d stumbled into the clearing from the west. Then came longer, deeper steps, where he had darted straight for the coins.

He is tracking the silver, Iseult guessed, and though the why and the how of it eluded her, she couldn’t stop the certainty prickling down her spine. The silver talers were important; the Bloodwitch wanted them.

As Habim always said, Use every resource available.

Cautiously, Iseult entered the clearing. When the Bloodwitch didn’t stir, even with the soft squelch of earth beneath her feet, she walked more boldly. Upon reaching her sack of coins, she peered inside. They glinted up at her, just as she remembered, their double-headed eagles dusted with brown. Coated in blood.

He must have tracked the blood.

Next, Iseult turned to the Bloodwitch. A stained bear trap sat within arm’s reach, buzzing with flies. Hanks of skin and sinew clung to its closed claws. The Bloodwitch had stepped right into it, and now he was healing.