Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

Safi nodded curtly before kicking into a run—west, toward the inner heart of Veñaza City—and when she reached the edge of Mathew’s roof, she leaped for the next slope of shingles.

She slammed down. Pigeons burst upward, wings flapping to get out of the way, and then Iseult bounded down beside her.

But Safi was already moving, already flying for the next roof. And the next roof after that, on and on with Iseult right behind.

* * *

Iseult slunk along the cobblestoned street, Safi two steps ahead. The girls had veered inland from the coffee shop, crossing canals and looping back over bridges to avoid city guards. Fortunately, morning traffic had begun—a teeming mass of fruit-laden carts, donkeys, goats, and people of all races and nationalities. Threads with colors as varied as their owners’ skins swirled lazily through the heat.

Safi skipped in front of a swine cart, leaving Iseult to chase after her. Then it was around a beggar, past a group of Purists shouting about the sins of magic, and then directly through a herd of unhappy sheep before the girls reached a clogged mass of unmoving traffic. Ahead, Threads swirled with red annoyance at the holdup.

Iseult imagined her own Threads were just as red. The girls were so close to the Southern Wharf District that Iseult could even see the hundreds of white-sailed ships berthed ahead.

But she embraced the frustration. Other emotions—ones she didn’t want to name and that no decent Threadwitch would ever allow to the surface—shivered in her chest. Stasis, she told herself, just as her mother had her taught years ago. Stasis in your fingertips and your toes.

Soon, the Threads of traffic flickered with cyan understanding. The color moved like a snake across a pond, as if the crowds were learning, one by one, the reason for this traffic jam.

Back, back the color moved until at last an old biddy near the girls squawked, “What? A blockade up ahead? But I’ll miss the freshest crabs!”

Iseult’s gut turned icy—and Safi’s Threads flashed with gray fear.

“Hell-gates,” she hissed. “Now what, Iz?”

“More brazening, I think.” With a grunt and shifting of her weight, Iseult fished out a thick gray tome from her pack. “We’ll look like two very studious apprentices if we’re carrying books. You can take A Brief History of Dalmotti Autonomy.”

“Brief my behind,” Safi muttered, though she did accept the enormous book. Next, Iseult hauled out a blue hide-bound volume titled An Illustrated Guide to the Carawen Monastery.

“Oh, now I see why you have these.” Safi lifted her eyebrows, daring Iseult to argue. “They aren’t for disguise at all. You just didn’t want to leave behind your favorite book.”

“And?” Iseult sniffed dismissively. “Does this mean you don’t want to carry that?”

“No, no. I’ll keep it.” Safi popped her chin high. “Just promise that you’ll let me do all the acting once we reach the guards.”

“Act away, Saf.” Grinning to herself, Iseult tugged her scarf low. It was soaked through with sweat, but it still shaded her face. Her skin. Then she adjusted her gloves until not an inch of wrist was visible. All the focus would be on Safi and would stay on Safi.

For as Mathew always said, With your right hand, give a person what he expects—and with your left hand, cut his purse. Safi always played the distracting right hand—and she was good at it—while Iseult lurked in the shadows, ready to claim whatever purse needed cutting.

As Iseult settled into a boiling wait, she creaked back her book’s thick cover. Ever since a monk had helped Iseult when she was a little girl, Iseult had been somewhat … well, obsessed was the word Safi always used. But it wasn’t just gratitude that had left Iseult fascinated by the Carawens—it was their pure robes and gleaming opal earrings. Their deadly training and sacred vows.

Life at the Carawen monastery seemed so simple. So contained. No matter one’s heritage, one could join and have instant acceptance. Instant respect.

It was a feeling Iseult could scarcely imagine yet her heart beat hungrily every time she thought of it.

The book’s pages rustled open to page thirty-seven—to where a bronze piestra shone up at her. She had wedged the coin there to mark her last page, and its winged lion seemed almost to laugh at her.

The first piestra toward our new life, Iseult thought. Then her eyes flickered over the ornate Dalmotti script on the page. Descriptions and images of different Carawen monks scrolled across it, the first of which was Mercenary Monk, its illustration all knives and sword and stony expression.

It looked just like the Bloodwitch.

Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch.

Ice pooled in Iseult’s belly at the memory of his red eyes, his bared teeth. Ice … and something hollower. Heavier.

Disappointment, she finally pinpointed, for it seemed so vastly wrong that a monster such as he should be allowed into the monastery’s ranks.

Iseult glanced at the caption beneath the illustration, as if this might offer some explanation. Yet all she read was, Trained to fight abroad in the name of the Cahr Awen.

Iseult’s breath slid out at that word—Cahr Awen—and her chest stretched tight. As a girl, she’d spent hours, climbing trees and pretending she was one of the Cahr Awen—that she was one of the two witches born from the Origin Wells who could cleanse even the darkest evils.

But just as many of the springs feeding the Wells had been dead for centuries, no new Cahr Awen had been born in almost five hundred years—and Iseult’s fantasies had inevitably ended with gangs of village children. They would swarm whatever tree she’d clambered into, shouting up curses and hate that they’d learned from their parents. A Threadwitch who can’t make Threadstones doesn’t belong here!