Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

Iseult looked to the sky. Buzzards and crows circled, suggesting more death ahead on the river’s shore.

Iseult knelt beside the man. A boy, really, no older than she. His eyes were open, glass staring straight ahead, even as flies scuttled over. A golden serpent coiled across his belt, which Aeduan had described as the Baedyed standard. He looked nothing like the sailors Iseult and Aeduan had watched from the cliffside, though. This boy bore no saber, only knives and a spyglass.

A scout. Iseult would need to move more carefully. Folding her hand in her sleeve, Iseult reached out to close the boy’s eyes. Not because the Moon Mother demanded the dead be “sleeping” before entering her realm, nor because Trickster was known to inhabit the forgotten bodies of the forest.

No, Iseult wanted to close the dead boy’s eyes simply because it was making her stomach spin to watch the flies crawling. With a sleeve-covered finger, she eased down the boy’s left eyelid.

She moved to the right eye. Yet as the lid sank low, Threads tangled into her awareness. Hungry purple Threads, furious crimson Threads. They moved at the fringe of her magic, a frayed edge to warp around her. Focused blue Threads, hunting green.

Iseult scrabbled upright, and for the first time since finding the body, it occurred to her what it might mean. A dead scout amid an unstable alliance. Could this be an end to their fragile peace?

Doesn’t matter, Iseult decided. For even if the Baedyeds and the Red Sails turned on each other, it wouldn’t change Iseult’s course. If anything, it meant she must travel more quickly.

She hurried away from the body, veering straight for the river. Away from the hunting Threads. Faster, faster she moved, and with much less care. She knew no one followed, and the time needed to hide her trail wasn’t worth it.

More Threads pulsed into her senses, flashing from the river. From the ships she knew sailed there, the ones she had to get past.

The foliage parted; the floodplain gave way to roots and spongy riverbank. Ships and soldiers and Threads. Three massive galleons, six smaller vessels—and more drifting beyond the next bend in the river, where others had already sailed ahead. A charge hung in the air, a shivering in the weave of the world.

Iseult knew that juddering, though she’d never seen it—never felt it—on such a massive scale.

The Threads that bind were about to break.

Without another thought, Iseult punched into a sprint. Her ankles rolled, her knees popped, but she needed to get past these ships, past these armies and these circling birds, before the world around her finally tore. Before the Threads connecting Baedyed to Red Sail finally snapped.

Iseult hadn’t considered that she might find more corpses ahead. In fact, she had already forgotten all the buzzards and crows. Her world had pinpointed down to her feet, her route, her speed.

Stasis came so naturally when she had a plan. When she wasn’t simply speeding for her life. Her plan, though, wasn’t a good one—which she realized as soon as she tripped over another dead man. His arm, so brown amid the riverside grass, had looked like a root. She’d hopped … and her heel had planted into ribs.

Iseult went sprawling. Her hands landed on a third corpse—on his leg—and her face zoomed in close to a fourth man’s open eyes.

Flies kicked into her mouth. A crow squawked overhead.

Before Iseult could push upright, the Threads she’d sensed earlier—the vicious ones, the angry ones—scuttled into range. They were cantering for shore. They would reach her soon.

Iseult tried to stand, her fingers clawing into dead flesh. Still fresh enough to resist, but hard. Stiff.

Dead, dead, dead.

Once on her feet, she searched for cover … but there was nothing. No rocks large enough to duck beneath, no branches low enough to climb.

A frantic glance to the river showed a launch approaching, packed with men wearing violent Threads.

Nowhere to run. No time to plan. Yet for once, no panic battered in Iseult’s throat. Nor a desperate wish that Safi were here to intuit a way free. Instead, Iseult’s breaths stayed calm. Her focus keen. Her training at the ready.

With your right hand, give a man what he expects to see.

In a forest full of corpses, the solution was obvious. She dropped to the ground beside the nearest corpse, draped her body across his legs, and went limp.

Her eyes fluttered shut just as the Red Sails hit the riverbank.

THIRTY-THREE

As Aeduan stalked through the oaks of the Contested Lands, his pocket felt light without the arrowhead. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d grown to its weight. To its iron presence.

But now it was gone, and that was that. No dwelling on it. Simply moving forward.

His muscles itched. His fingers flexed and fisted in time to his steps, and each time Owl tripped, he had to bite back frustration.

It was not Owl’s fault that she was small and frail. It was not her fault that she demanded constant attention. Her stride was short, her body weak. She shrank, she huddled, she stared hard at anything that wasn’t Aeduan’s eyes.

For every one of Aeduan’s steps, she needed three. For every rise in the earth that he crested easily, she had to crook, to scrabble, to examine thoroughly before each step.

There was nothing to be done for it. This was the path Aeduan had chosen, and it led north. Directly back the way he and the Threadwitch had come. He suspected, in fact, that the scents lingering on Owl’s clothes might lead him to the same Nomatsi tribe who’d left the bear trap that shredded his leg. Like the Truthwitch’s scent, though, the tribe’s blood-smells were far. A week of travel; likely more at Owl’s current pace.