Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

Orange, frantic Threads flared around Iseult—but she barely registered them. She was already shoving and sprinting for an intersection one block back. There was a bridge over the nearest canal there. Maybe if she could cross the canal, she could lose the Bloodwitch.

Her feet thrashed through mud, hopped over beggars, skidded around carts, but then halfway to the bridge, she glanced back—and wished she hadn’t. The Bloodwitch was definitely pursuing and he was definitely fast. The same people who’d been intent on slowing Iseult now cleared out of his path.

“Move!” Iseult shrieked at a Purist with his Repent! sign. He didn’t move, so she clipped him on the shoulder.

He and his sign went spinning like a windmill. But it worked in Iseult’s favor, for even though she lost speed—even though she was forced to dive beneath a passing litter carried by four men—it looked as if she aimed left, for the bridge. And she heard the Purist bellowing to go after her across the canal.

So she didn’t go left as planned. Instead, she slung right on her heel and aimed straight back into traffic, praying the monk listened to the Purist and went left. Praying—desperately praying—that he couldn’t smell her blood-scent through these salamander fibers.

She foisted her hood in place and hurtled onward. There was another intersection coming up—a thick flow of traffic east to west toward a second bridge. She’d have to barrel through, continue straight.

Or not. Just as she pelted behind a woodcutter’s cart and popped around a cheesemonger’s stall, she hit empty air.

Iseult tossed her arms wide, teetering toward an unexpected canal of green, sludgy waters almost as packed with people as the streets.

Then a long flat-hulled pram slid beneath Iseult, and in half a breath, she absorbed the scene below: Shallow deck covered in nets. Fisherman gaping up at me.

Iseult stopped fighting her fall. Instead, she leaned into it.

Air rushed against her. White lacey nets closed in fast. Then she was on the deck, knees bending, hands catching herself.

Something sliced through her palm. A rusted hook, she realized before she scrabbled upright. The pram listed wildly. The fisherman roared, but Iseult was already pumping toward the next passing boat—a low ferry with a frilly red awning.

“Look out!” Iseult shouted, lunging high and grabbing hold of the balustrade. She hauled herself up as wide-eyed passengers reared back. Blood smeared on the railing’s pickets. Faintly, she hoped this burning slash didn’t make her that much easier to follow for the Bloodwitch.

She scooted across the ferry in four bounds—it would seem everyone wanted Iseult off the boat as badly as she did. She topped the railing, sucked in a breath while another pram coasted by—this one covered in the day’s mackerel.

She jumped. Her feet squished and suddenly she was sprawling on silver scales with a face full of gooey eyes. The fisherman shrieked at her—more displeased than surprised—and Iseult hefted herself up to find his black beard bearing down.

She pushed past—elbowing him in the gut, right as they cruised by a low staircase clumped with pole fishermen.

A rough jump later and Iseult latched on to the flagstone stairs. None of the fishermen offered to help—they only shuddered back. One even stabbed at her with his fishing pole, his Threads a terrified gray.

Iseult grabbed the end of the pole. The man’s Threads blazed brighter, and he tried to yank the pole back—but proceeded to yank up Iseult instead. Thank you, she thought, straggling up the stairs. She glanced back once and saw blood streaked on the stones. Her palm was gushing a lot more than the distant pain warranted.

She reached the street. Traffic swarmed past, and she scrambled for some strategy. All of her plans were falling through the hell-gates, but surely Iseult could take a moment to think. She was crap at running pell-mell—it was why Safi was the leader in these situations. Without time to strategize, Iseult always ran herself into corners.

But as she stood there, slinking alongside the canal and clutching her bleeding hand in her cloak, she got the moment she needed.

Wide road, she thought. A main artery from town, likely alongside this canal the whole way. Traffic organized in two directions, and a man leading a saddled brindle mare. No sweat darkening the mare’s shoulders. If I take her, I can flee the city entirely and hide overnight with the tribe.

Though returning to the home she’d spent most of her life avoiding was hardly Iseult’s ideal solution, the Midenzi settlement was the only place she knew of that wouldn’t kick her out at first sight of her skin.

It was also the only place she felt certain the Bloodwitch—even if he hunted her by sight and by blood—couldn’t follow. The lands around the settlement were riddled with traps that no non-Midenzi could navigate.

So in a flurry of speed, Iseult shrugged off her cloak, tossed it over the man’s head, and then vaulted into the mare’s saddle—praying all the while that the mare’s flattening ears were a sign she was ready to ride.

“I’m so sorry,” she shouted as the man flailed beneath the salamander cloak. “I’ll send her back!” Then she dug in her heels and left the man behind.

As the mare launched into a fast trot through traffic, Iseult flung her gaze across the canal. And found the Bloodwitch watching her. There were gaps in the boats now; he couldn’t cross the water as she had.

But he could smirk at her—and wave too. A flicker of his right fingers and then a tapping of his right palm.

He knew her hand was bleeding, and he was telling her he could follow. That he would follow, and likely be smiling that terrifying smile all the way.