Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

When a person stood directly before Safi, she could tell truth from lie, reality from deception. And as far as Iseult had learned in her tutoring sessions with Mathew, the last recorded Truthwitch had died a century ago—beheaded by a Marstoki emperor for allying herself with a Cartorran queen.

If Safi’s magic ever became public knowledge, she would be used as a political tool …

Or eliminated as a political threat.

Safi’s power was that valuable and that rare. Which was why, for Safi’s entire life, she’d kept her magic secret. Like Iseult, she was a heretic: an unregistered witch. The back of Safi’s right hand was unadorned, and no Witchmark tattoo proclaimed her powers. Yet one of these days, someone other than one of Safi’s closest friends would figure out what she was, and when that day came, soldiers would storm the Silk Guildmaster’s guest room and drag away Safi in chains.

Soon, the girls’ blades were cleaned and resheathed, and Safi was pinning Iseult with one of her harder, more contemplative stares.

“Out with it,” Iseult ordered.

“We may have to flee the city, Iz. Leave the Dalmotti Empire entirely.”

Iseult rolled her salty lips together, trying not to frown. Trying not to feel.

The thought of abandoning Veñaza City … Iseult couldn’t do it. The capital of the Dalmotti Empire was her home. The people in the Northern Wharf District had stopped noticing her pale Nomatsi skin or her angled Nomatsi eyes.

And it had taken her six and a half years to carve out that niche.

“For now,” Iseult said quietly, “let’s worry about getting into the city unseen—and let’s pray, too, that the Bloodwitch didn’t actually smell your blood.” Or your magic.

Safi huffed a weary sigh and nestled into a beam of sunlight. It made her skin glow, her hair luminescent. “To whom should I pray?”

Iseult scratched at her nose, grateful to have the subject shift. “We were almost killed by a Carawen monk, so why not pray to the Origin Wells?”

Safi gave a little shudder. “If that person prays to the Origin Wells, then I don’t want to. How about that Nubrevnan god? What’s His name?”

“Noden.”

“That’s the one.” Safi clasped her hands to her chest and stared up at the ceiling. “Noden, God of the Nubrevnan waves—”

“I think it’s all waves, Safi. And everything else too.”

Safi rolled her eyes. “God of all waves and everything else too, can you please make sure no one comes after us? Especially … him. Just keep him far away. And if you could keep the Veñaza City guards away too, that would be nice.”

“This is easily the worst prayer I have ever heard,” Iseult declared.

“Weasels piss on you, Iz. I’m not done yet.” Safi heaved a sigh through her nose and then resumed her prayer. “Please return all of our money to me before he or Habim get back from their trip. And … that is all. Thank you very much, oh sacred Noden.” Then, she hastily added, “Oh, and please ensure that Chiseled Cheater gets exactly what he deserves.”

Iseult almost snorted at that last request—except that a wave crashed into the lighthouse, sudden and rough against the stone. Water splattered Iseult’s face. She swiped it away, agitated. Warm instead of cool.

“Please, Noden,” she whispered, rubbing sea spray off her forehead. “Please just get us through this alive.”

THREE

Reaching Mathew’s coffee shop where Iseult lived proved harder than Safi had anticipated. She and Iseult were exhausted, hungry, and bruised to hell-flames, so even the basic act of walking made Safi want to groan. Or sit down. Or at least ease her aches with a hot bath and pastries.

But baths and pastries weren’t happening anytime soon. Guards swarmed everywhere in Veñaza City, and by the time the girls had straggled into the Northern Wharf District, it was almost dawn. They’d spent half the night hiking blearily from their lighthouse to the capital and then the other half of the night slinking through alleys and clambering over kitchen gardens.

Every flash of white—every dangling piece of laundry, every torn sailcloth or tattered curtain—had punched Safi’s stomach into her mouth. But it had never been the Bloodwitch, thank the gods, and right as night began fading into dawn, the sign to Mathew’s coffee shop appeared. It poked out of a narrow road branching off the main wharf-side avenue.

REAL MARSTOKI COFFEE

BEST IN VEÑAZA CITY

It was not, in fact, real Marstoki coffee—Mathew wasn’t even from the Empire of Marstok. Instead, the coffee was filtered and bland, catering to, as Habim always called it, “dull western palates.”

Mathew’s coffee was also not the best in the city. Even Mathew would admit that the dingy hole-in-the-wall in the Southern Wharf District had much better coffee. But up here on the northern edges of the capital, people didn’t wander in for coffee. They came in for business.

The sort of business Wordwitches like Mathew excelled at—the trade of rumors and secrets, the planning of heists and cons. He ran coffee shops all across the Witchlands, and any news about anything always reached Mathew first.

It was his Wordwitchery that had made Mathew the best choice for Safi’s tutor, since it allowed him to speak all tongues.

More important, though, Mathew’s Heart-Thread, Habim, had worked for Safi’s uncle her entire life—both as a man-at-arms and as a constantly displeased instructor. So when Safi had been sent south, it had only made sense for Mathew to take over where Habim had left off.