“And that’s exactly my point, Iz! They’re tricking that clause, so why couldn’t they trick other clauses too? For all we know, they don’t even care if they break the Truce.”
That gave Iseult pause—thank the gods—but when Safi lifted her reins to set off once more, Iseult’s hand shot up.
“Threadstones,” she said flatly. “You’ll know if I’m in danger from your Threadstone. If it lights up, then you can come to my rescue.”
“No—”
“Yes.” A smile lifted the corner of Iseult’s lips as she towed out her Threadstone and gripped it tight. “You know this plan could work and it’s the only worthwhile strategy I can think of. Let’s just be glad that Lejna is a ghost town. There’s no one around to get hurt.”
“Except for us, you mean.”
“Stop arguing and start undressing.” Iseult slid from the saddle and looped her reins over a low branch. Then she began unbuttoning her blouse. “A storm’s coming, Saf, and you’re at its eye. I can be the right hand and you can be the left.”
The left hand trusts the right, Mathew always said. The left hand never looks back until after the purse is grabbed.
Iseult had always been the left hand—she’d always trusted Safi to distract until the end. Which meant it was Safi’s turn to do the same.
Charged air burst through the forest. It lashed into Safi, around her … and then gathered itself behind her. She flung a glance back, eyes watering. Storm clouds, dark as pitch, swirled above the treetops.
“I don’t like this,” Safi said, really having to yell now. “In fact, I hate this—the storm and the plan. Why does it have to be ‘we’? Why not just me?”
“Because ‘just me’ isn’t who we are,” Iseult hollered back. “I’ll always follow you, Safi, and you’ll always follow me. Threadsisters to the end.”
A fierce, burning need rose in Safi’s lungs at those words. She wanted to tell Iseult everything she felt—her gratitude, her love, her terror, her faith, but she didn’t. Instead, she smiled grimly. “Threadsisters to the end.”
Then she did as Iseult had ordered: she clambered from her mare and began peeling off her clothes.
* * *
Aeduan smelled his old mentor a mile away. Her scent—crisp spring water and salt-lined cliffs—was unmistakable. As familiar to Aeduan as his pulse.
And as unavoidable as death unless Aeduan was willing to leave the path—which he wasn’t—or slay her where she stood.
Which he also wasn’t.
The mile leading to her passed in a smear of green forest and yellow stone, predawn light and a rumbling sea storm. When he reached the narrowest point in the path—a place bordered by overhanging rocks to one side and wave-pounded cliffs on the other—Aeduan relinquished control of his blood. He gave the power of pulse and muscle back to his body and slowed to a stop.
Monk Evrane stood still as a statue before him. The only movement was the hot wind in her hair, through her Carawen cloak. Her baldric lacked all of her blades save two. Her sword was nowhere to be seen.
The older monk had not changed in the two years since Aeduan had left the Monastery. A bit browner in the face, perhaps. And tired—she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. Weeks even. Yet her hair was as silver as it had always been.
And her expression as gentle and concerned as Aeduan remembered.
It angered him. She’d never had a right to care about him—and she most certainly didn’t have that right now.
“It has been too long,” she said in that throaty voice of hers. “You have grown.”
Aeduan felt his jaw clench. Felt his eyes twitch. “Stand aside.”
“You know I cannot do that, Aeduan.”
He unsheathed his sword. It was a bare whisper over the crash of waves below. “I will cut you down.”
“Not easily.” Evrane flicked up her wrist. A vicious blade dropped into her hand. With a smooth dip of her back foot, she sank into a defensive stance. “You have forgotten who trained you.”
“And you have forgotten my witchery, Monk Evrane.” He eased his parrying knife from his hip and matched Evrane’s knee-bent stance.
She moved—a spin that sent her white cloak flying. Distracting—certainly, but Aeduan had his eyes on her hand. After all, she was the one who’d taught him that the key to any knife fight was controlling the knife hand.
Evrane whirled in close. He ducked low to meet her.
But it was not her blade that he met. It was her feet—a boot heel in his neck. Then the dagger at his chest.
He tottered back, not as fast as he should have. As he could have if he were fighting anyone but her.
With a burst of magic, he shot back ten steps—too fast and too far for her to easily catch. Then he glanced down.
Her knife had cut him. Four shallow slices that his witchery would heal whether he wanted it to or not. He would waste power on harmless surface wounds.
“You know who they are,” Evrane called. She stalked steadily toward Aeduan. “It is your sworn duty to protect them.”
Aeduan watched her from the tops of his eyes. “Have you heard the rumors, then? I can promise you, Monk Evrane, they are not the Cahr Awen. They’re both Aetherwitches.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She smiled, a terrifying smile of rapture and heady violence combined. “We must have misinterpreted the Records, and no Voidwitch is needed. For I saw it, Aeduan: those girls woke the Nubrevnan Origin Well—”