Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

What the hell-flames had Safi gotten into? And how the hell-flames was Iseult going to get them out?

Iseult closed her eyes, gave herself three inhales to find that place she never could hang on to when her mother or Alma were around. Alichi shifted uneasily, clearly ready to get away from whatever was coming—and Iseult was inclined to agree. The horses couldn’t gallop forever, and Iseult was pretty sure that four Carawen monks would be hard to stop without some defense.

A defense like the lighthouse.

Iseult pushed the mare into a canter. She needed to be at the perfect speed to fall in with Safi—

“Move!” Safi’s voice shrieked out. “Get off the road, you idiot!”

Iseult only looked back once to scream, “It’s me, Safi!” Then she kicked the mare into a gallop—just as Safi hurtled into position beside her.

They galloped side by side.

“Sorry to make you wait!” Safi roared over the rapid four-beat race. Her legs were bared, her silk gown shredded, and she clutched a pitchfork to her stomach. “And sorry for the trouble on my ass!”

“Good thing I have a plan, then!” Iseult shouted back. She couldn’t hear the pursuing monks, but she could sense their Threads—calm, ready. “The lighthouse is close enough for us to make a stand.”

“Is the tide out?”

“Should be!”

Safi’s white Threads flickered with icy blue relief. She shifted her gaze briefly to Iseult—then back to the road. “Where’s your hair?” she shouted. “And what happened to your arm?”

“Cut my hair and got shot with an arrow!”

“Gods below, Iseult! A few hours away and your whole life tumbles through the hell-gates!”

“I might say the same to you,” Iseult shouted back—though it was getting hard to scream and ride. “Four opponents on your tail and a ruined dress!”

Safi’s Threads flickered to an almost giddy pink and then flared with panicked orange. “Wait—there are only four Carawens?”

“Yeah!”

“There should be a fifth.” Safi’s Threads glowed even more brilliantly. “And it’s him. The Bloodwitch.”

Iseult swore, and a great downward sweep of cold knocked away her calm. If a soldier like Habim had failed to stop the Bloodwitch, then she and Safi stood no chance.

But at least the lighthouse was starting to take shape now—its stout walls separated from the road by a long strip of beach and receding tide. The horses pounded off the shore and into the waves. Saltwater blasted upward. The old tower with its barnacles and gull crap was thirty paces away … twenty … five …

“Dismount!” Iseult screamed, pulling the reins with far more force than was fair. She scrabbled off the horse and with hands that were almost shaking, she unstrapped the cutlass. Beside her, Safi splashed into the ankle-deep waves with her pitchfork gripped tight.

Then without another word, the girls settled into defensive stances, their backs to the tower, and waited for the four monks to gallop across the beach toward them.

FOURTEEN

The Jana slipped through coastal waters with barely a peep from her usually groaning wood. Merik stood at the weatherworn tiller, gripping it tight and steering the warship, while beside him on the quarterdeck were Kullen and three Tidewitch officers.

As one, Kullen and the officers chanted below their breaths, their eyes wide behind wind-spectacles. The lenses protected them from the bewitched air while the sea shanty on their tongues kept them focused. Normally Ryber would pound the wind-drum—with the unbewitched mallet—to give the men a beat to sing by. And normally, the entire crew would bellow a shanty.

But tonight, quiet and stealth were required, so the four men sang alone while the wind and tides they summoned hauled the ship onward. The remainder of Merik’s crew sat across the main deck, nothing to do when magic did all the work for them.

Merik glanced at Kullen every few moments, though he knew his Threadbrother hated it. Yet Merik hated seeing Kullen’s lungs seize up and his mouth bob like a fish—and the attacks always seemed to happen when Kullen summoned more magic than he ought.

Right now, the way the Jana skimmed across the sea’s surface, Merik had no doubt Kullen was calling on heaps of power.

Merik and his men had left the Doge’s palace earlier than planned. After the disastrous Nubrevnan four-step, Merik had wanted to be anywhere but the party. His magic had been out of control, his temper exploding in his veins—and it was all because of that stormy-eyed Cartorran.

Not that he would ever admit that, of course. Instead, he’d blamed the early departure on his new job for Dom Eron fon Hasstrel.

That man had arrived at the perfect moment, and the conversation that had followed had been more fruitful than Merik could have dared hope.

Dom Eron was a soldier—everything in his bearing and gruff voice had indicated that, and Merik had instantly liked him.

What Eron was not was a keen businessman, and for all that Merik might’ve warmed to the man, he was hardly going to point out that Dom Eron’s proposal was heavily in Merik’s favor.

All Merik had to do was carry a single passenger—Dom Eron’s niece or daughter or something like that—to an abandoned port city at the westernmost tip of the Hundred Isles. As long as the woman reached Lejna unharmed (he’d been especially emphatic about the “unharmed” part), then the bewitched document now sitting on Merik’s table would be considered fulfilled. Negotiations for trade could begin with the Hasstrel farmers.