“I thought,” spoke a third man, his accent thick, “that Ragnor had told only us about the child.”
“And Ragnor clearly lied.” The Firewitch was closer now. Iseult sensed his Threads, heard his breaths as he nosed around the corpses, like a dog on the hunt.
Her heart banged harder. She was definitely shaking. Please don’t come here. Please don’t come here.
“Maybe,” said the first speaker, “the Baedyeds don’t know what they’ve found. Maybe they took her by accident.”
“And killed seven of ours to get her?”
Owl, Iseult realized—and fast on its heels came another thought: Aeduan killed seven men.
The Firewitch snooped closer. He’d found something he liked. His Threads flared with interest and desire.
Then fire whooshed out. Heat seared against the side of Iseult’s face.
The man with the boot rocked back, hissing curses.
The Firewitch simply laughed, and a smell like burned hair slithered into Iseult’s nose. He was burning the corpses.
“Stop,” said the man with the boot, his Threads paling into beige revulsion. “The Baedyeds will see the smoke.”
“Does that matter?” the Firewitch snapped. Though he did clap his hands, and the fire did wink out. Only the smell and a hiss-pop! left behind. “We could win their ships. And their horses. All of Saldonica, even, if we attack now. All at once, while the Baedyeds are unprepared.”
At those words, every set of Threads in the area bruised into hungry shades of violet. They wanted what the Baedyeds had.
“But what of Ragnor?” asked a new voice. “What of the child?”
“We reclaim the child, and we sell her. If her magic is so valuable that Ragnor wants it, surely someone else will want it too.”
Another shiver of agreement ran through their Threads. Yet although the men spoke on, Iseult stopped hearing. She couldn’t listen, for the Firewitch was now stepping toward her.
The whole world shriveled down to his boots closing in on her left. One pace, two.
Then he was there. He stepped on her arm, and her mind erupted with white. Her lungs strained. She couldn’t inhale, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. The urge to open her eyes scored through her muscles.
The Firewitch knelt—more a sense than anything else, for Iseult couldn’t see him. Couldn’t watch as his knee dug into her elbow, shoving the joint in a way it was never meant to be shoved.
She heard each of his breaths. Harsh exhales that smelled like smoke and dead things. Closer. He was leaning in closer, his fingers grabbing onto her salamander cloak—
A horn ripped through the air. Deep, rumbling, and shimmering with blood lust.
As one, the Threads around Iseult flashed with turquoise surprise. Then came tan confusion. So quick, it was almost lost before crimson fury took hold.
Then a cannon sounded—once. Twice.
The Firewitch released Iseult’s cloak, pushing to his feet. Snarling and with flames licking out to gust over Iseult. Still she moved not a muscle.
Not until he’d stepped away, not until he’d joined with the others and they had roared their rage to the sky.
The instant the men were gone—the instant Iseult knew their Threads were far enough away not to see her—she clawed herself upright.
The salamander cloak was untouched, but her breeches were scorched below the knee. A bright, shrieking patch of blister already peeked through. But she was alive.
Moon Mother bless her, she was alive.
For several guttering breaths, Iseult hesitated. Half standing, half crouched, and with a blackened corpse still smoking nearby.
She had to run. Now. Before a full battle erupted. Which way, though—that was the question, and though Iseult knew what she wanted to choose, what she needed to choose, her wants and her needs no longer aligned.
Iseult fumbled for her Threadstone. It had left a mark below her collarbone, as had the silver taler strung beside it. Iseult squeezed them both, fingers white knuckled. Her Threadwitch logic told her to travel one way. To speed, to race, to outrun what was coming. Her heart begged to go that way too—the Threads that bind tugged her south.
It was only half her heart, though. The other half … it longed to go north. The foolish way. The one where survival seemed impossible.
More cannons thundered in the distance. Smoke plumed across the sky. The battle had begun, and it would soon reach where Aeduan and Owl ought to be. If Iseult would just turn south, she could leave it all behind.
It was then, as she stood there in agonized indecision, that magic roared over her. A hurricane of power and fiery Threads. It laced over the sky, heat to set the forest aflame.
In that moment, Iseult knew what she had to do. Logic didn’t matter, nor Threadwitch practicality, nor even the opposing halves of her heart.
What mattered was doing the right thing.
So Iseult made her choice, and she ran.
* * *
Aeduan carried Owl on his back. She bounced and jostled, her fear a palpable thing.
But like her namesake, Owl was a fighter. She held tight and didn’t once resist the onward sprint. Aeduan’s blood, alive with magic, drove him to speeds no man could match. No man could stop.
Or so he hoped. Aeduan had never had to dash like this while protecting another person.
A horn split the air with a single, long bellow. A-ooooo!
Then fire erupted in the distance, an inferno ignited by magic.
Firewitch. Aeduan didn’t know if it was the one from yesterday—and it didn’t matter. A vast conflagration of heat and flame rolled this way. He had to outrun it.