“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.
When a person stood directly before Safi, she could tell truth from lie, reality from deception. And as far as Iseult had learned in her tutoring sessions with Mathew, the last recorded Truthwitch had died a century ago—beheaded by a Marstoki emperor for allying herself with a Cartorran queen.
If Safi’s magic ever became public knowledge, she would be used as a political tool …
Or eliminated as a political threat.
Safi’s power was that valuable and that rare. Which was why, for Safi’s entire life, she’d kept her magic secret. Like Iseult, she was a heretic: an unregistered witch. The back of Safi’s right hand was unadorned, and no Witchmark tattoo proclaimed her powers. Yet one of these days, someone other than one of Safi’s closest friends would figure out what she was, and when that day came, soldiers would storm the Silk Guildmaster’s guest room and drag away Safi in chains.
Soon, the girls’ blades were cleaned and resheathed, and Safi was pinning Iseult with one of her harder, more contemplative stares.
“Out with it,” Iseult ordered.
“We may have to flee the city, Iz. Leave the Dalmotti Empire entirely.”
Iseult rolled her salty lips together, trying not to frown. Trying not to feel.
The thought of abandoning Ve?aza City … Iseult couldn’t do it. The capital of the Dalmotti Empire was her home. The people in the Northern Wharf District had stopped noticing her pale Nomatsi skin or her angled Nomatsi eyes.
And it had taken her six and a half years to carve out that niche.
“For now,” Iseult said quietly, “let’s worry about getting into the city unseen—and let’s pray, too, that the Bloodwitch didn’t actually smell your blood.” Or your magic.
Safi huffed a weary sigh and nestled into a beam of sunlight. It made her skin glow, her hair luminescent. “To whom should I pray?”
Iseult scratched at her nose, grateful to have the subject shift. “We were almost killed by a Carawen monk, so why not pray to the Origin Wells?”
Safi gave a little shudder. “If that person prays to the Origin Wells, then I don’t want to. How about that Nubrevnan god? What’s His name?”
“Noden.”
“That’s the one.” Safi clasped her hands to her chest and stared up at the ceiling. “Noden, God of the Nubrevnan waves—”
“I think it’s all waves, Safi. And everything else too.”
Safi rolled her eyes. “God of all waves and everything else too, can you please make sure no one comes after us? Especially … him. Just keep him far away. And if you could keep the Ve?aza City guards away too, that would be nice.”