The interior of the lighthouse was no larger than Iseult’s attic bedroom over Mathew’s coffee shop. Sunlight beamed in through algae-slimed windows, and wind tugged sea foam through the arched door.
“I’m sorry,” Safi said, her voice muffled as she squirmed from her sodden tunic. Then her shirt was completely off, and she tossed it on a windowsill. Safi’s usually tanned skin was pale beneath her freckles.
“Don’t apologize.” Iseult gathered her own discarded clothes. “I’m the one who told you about the card game in the first place.”
“This is true,” Safi replied, her voice shaking as she hopped on one foot and tried to remove her pants—with her boots still on. She always did that, and it boggled Iseult’s mind that an eighteen-year-old could still be too impatient to undress herself properly. “But,” Safi added, “I’m the one who wanted the nicer rooms. If we’d just bought that place two weeks ago—”
“Then we’d have rats for roommates,” Iseult interrupted. She shuffled to the nearest water-free, sunlit patch of floor. “You were right to want a different place. It costs more, but it would’ve been worth it.”
“Would’ve been being the key words.” With a loud grunt, Safi finally wrestled free of her pants. “There’ll be no place of our own now, Iz. I bet every guard in Veñaza City is out looking for us. Not to mention the…” For a moment, Safi stared at her boots. Then, in a frantic movement, she tore off the right one. “So will the Bloodwitch.”
Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch. The words pulsed through Iseult in time to her heart. In time to her blood.
Iseult had never seen a Bloodwitch before … or anyone with a magic linked to the Void. Voidwitches were just scary stories after all—they weren’t real. They didn’t guard Guildmasters and try to gut you with swords.
After wringing out her pants and smoothing each fold on a windowsill, Iseult shuffled to a leather satchel at the back of the lighthouse. She and Safi always stowed an emergency kit here before a heist, just in case the worst scenario unfolded.
Not that they’d held many heists before. Only every now and then for the lowlifes who deserved it.
Like those two apprentices who’d ruined one of Guildmaster Alix’s silk shipments and tried to blame it on Safi.
Or those thugs who’d busted into Mathew’s shop while he was away and stolen his silver cutlery.
Then there were those four separate occasions when Safi’s taro card games had ended in brawls and missing coins. Justice had been required, of course—not to mention the reclamation of pilfered goods.
Today’s encounter, though, was the first time the emergency satchel had actually been needed.
After rummaging past the spare clothes and a water bag, Iseult found two rags and a tub of lanolin. Then she hauled up the girls’ discarded weapons and trudged back to Safi. “Let’s clean our blades and come up with a plan. We have to get back to the city somehow.”
Safi yanked off her second boot before accepting her sword and parrying knife. Both girls settled cross-legged on the rough floor, and Iseult sank into the familiar barnyard scent of the grease. Into the careful scrubbing motion of cleaning her scythes.
“What did the Bloodwitch’s Threads look like?” Safi asked quietly.
“I didn’t notice,” Iseult murmured. “Everything happened so fast.” She rubbed all the harder at the steel, protecting her beautiful Marstoki blades—gifts from Mathew’s Heart-Thread, Habim—against rust.
A silence stretched through the stone ruins. The only sounds were the squeak of cloth on steel, the eternal crash of Jadansi waves.
Iseult knew she seemed unperturbed as she cleaned, but she was absolutely certain that her Threads twined with the same frightened shades as Safi’s.
Iseult was a Threadwitch though, which meant she couldn’t see her own Threads—or those of any other Threadwitch.
When her witchery had manifested at nine years old, Iseult’s heart had felt like it would pound itself to dust. She was crumbling beneath the weight of a million Threads, none of which were her own. Everywhere she looked, she saw the Threads that build, the Threads that bind, and the Threads that break. Yet she could never see her own Threads or how she wove into the world.
So, just as every Nomatsi Threadwitch did, Iseult had learned to keep her body cool when it ought to be hot. To keep her fingers still when they ought to be trembling. To ignore the emotions that drove everyone else.
“I think,” Safi said, scattering Iseult’s thoughts, “the Bloodwitch knows I’m a Truthwitch.”
Iseult’s scrubbing paused. “Why,” her voice was flat as the steel in her hands, “would you think that?”
“Because of the way he smiled at me.” Safi shivered. “He smelled my magic, just like the tales say, and now he can hunt me.”
“Which means he could be tracking us right now.” Frost ran down Iseult’s back. Jolted in her shoulders. She scoured at her blade all the harder.
Normally, the act of cleaning helped her find stasis. Helped her thoughts slow and her practicality rise to the surface. She was the natural tactician, while Safi was the one with the first sparks of an idea.
Initiate, complete.
Except no solutions came to Iseult right now. She and Safi could lie low and avoid city guards for a few weeks, but they couldn’t hide from a Bloodwitch.
Especially if that Bloodwitch knew what Safi was—and could sell her to the highest bidder.