Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

Until they saw the boats drifting up the Amonra.

Aeduan exhaled sharply; Iseult’s nose twitched. “Red Sails,” he guessed. “Baedyeds too. With the Twenty Year Truce over, I suspect they’ve allied for an attack.” Quickly, he explained who the two pirate factions were and how whatever alliance they’d formed hovered beneath the tip of Lady Fate’s knife.

As he spoke, Aeduan eased a bronze spyglass from his baldric and scanned the view. Each ship was packed with soldiers, and each soldier was well armed. People teemed along the shore too. Almost invisible, but if he fixed on one spot long enough … There. Movement. Horses. More soldiers.

“Where are they going?” Iseult asked once he’d finished his explanation.

“Upstream.”

Now it was Iseult’s turn to sigh, but she didn’t say anything. In fact, the silence hung so long that Aeduan finally lowered his spyglass.

And found that she was watching him, her body still. For once, though, her face was not expressionless. It was tight with pain, her lips pinched and nose scrunched. Aeduan swallowed. Perhaps he had hurt her. Grass stains covered her shoulders, her knees, and a bruise purpled on her cheekbone.

But no. The longer he held her hazel gaze, the more he discerned. This wasn’t pain—this was grief. For the second time that morning, he wished he had said nothing about the Cahr Awen.

He angled away, returning the spyglass to his baldric, and cleared his throat. “They will have to disembark before the Falls, Threadwitch. We need to be gone before that happens.”

“Then let us leave,” she said, voice flat.

“We will need to move fast. Are you up for that?”

She snorted, and when Aeduan glanced back, he found her face had softened. The slightest—almost imperceptible—glint of mischief hovered there now.

“I think we both know the answer to that, Bloodwitch.” She stalked past him, her chin high. Challenging. “The question will be if you can keep up.”

Then she broke into a run, Aeduan broke into a run after her.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Cam hadn’t returned by morning of the next day. Merik had combed the streets of Old Town and the streets beyond—even the Cisterns too—but had found no trace of her.

Stop seeing what you want to see, Merik Nihar, and start seeing what’s really here! Her last words grated within his eardrums. Over and over. Laughing. Taunting. A ghost that wanted release. Stop seeing what you want to see!

What Merik wanted to see was Cam, the friend who had stood by him through floods and hell-waters. Over Shite Street and back.

Before he’d pushed her away.

All Merik could figure was that Cam had gone out to search for answers on the dead man in the storerooms … And then she had stumbled upon something she couldn’t fight. Like the shadow man.

Merik heaved his hood lower, streaking faster down Hawk’s Way. Stop seeing what you want to see! The attack pounded in his chest, in his eardrums. Inescapable and all too true.

Merik had seen potential trade for Nubrevna where there was none. He’d seen a navy that had “needed his leadership” when it hadn’t. He’d seen a selfish domna in Safiya fon Hasstrel, a frustrating Threadwitch in Iseult det Midenzi, and then an inconsequential ship’s boy in Cam—yet none of those presumptions had proved true.

Worst of all, in all of his holiest of holy conceit, Merik had seen a throne he thought he should sit upon—that Kullen had implied he should one day claim, even though that “greatness” was his sister’s right by birth.

Merik jostled forward, slow. Too slow. Carts and refugees and thrice-damned mules everywhere he tried to step.

A man stumbled against Merik’s back, and when Merik didn’t budge, the man shoved. “Stand aside—”

Merik had the man’s wrist in an instant, twisting until he felt the ligaments and bone strain. Another inch, and they would snap. “I will kill you,” was all Merik said.

“Please,” the man stammered.

Merik released him. Flung him away. He wanted to roar. I am dangerous!

But the words never came, for at that moment, a cool wind spiraled against Merik’s flesh. A breeze that sang to his witchery.

Death. Shadows. It called him … south. Farther down Hawk’s Way. The same icy darkness that had spoken to him in the storerooms—the same frozen curse that he feared might have claimed Cam.

Merik abandoned the quay, hurtling into a dark alley. There, he sprang up, foot by foot. Leaping one wall to the other, a wind to punt him higher. Side to side, until finally he hit a shingled roof.

Sunlight burned down. He dropped to a crouch and flexed his fingers, watching as dust coiled outward, carried by his winds. He reached for anything his charged air connected with.

There. Straight ahead.

Merik set off, cloak flying around him. His hood fell back. His boots slammed onto shingles, knocking them. Cracking them. Shattering more than a few.

He reached the end of the building. Gathering his breath and his power, Merik bounded over a strip of black alley. Rooftop after rooftop, the gap between Merik and this darkness—a shadow that sang to his blood—shrank with each gusting bound.

Until the rooftops ended, forcing him to stop. The Southern Wharf spanned before him, and beyond it, the water-bridge thrust across the clouded valley toward the Sentries.

So crowded. Boats crammed bow to stern, leaving no water visible. No gap in the people arriving.

Merik sank flat against the sloped shale and snaked to the edge. Instinct sent him grabbing for a spyglass in his admiral’s coat …