There would be no finding Gretchya, and as Iseult yanked in her own winds, screaming inwardly and aloud, Fly, fly, fly, Esme wedged a vision into her mind.
Northern horizon. White-sailed machine tumbling from the sky.
Iseult flung around, her winds wobbling against Corlant’s storm. He must be stealing every magic nearby. He must be stealing magic from the very earth itself. She couldn’t see it through the icy tears streaming from her eyes, she trusted Esme. Safi was ahead; the Threadstones were near. Once she had those, she could fix this. She would fix this.
They flew toward barren winter forests dotted by evergreens and a castle of white stone rooted atop the only hill for miles: the Emperor’s hunting lodge. Safi’s flying machine had crashed nearby. Yet with Corlant scratching and pulling from behind, Iseult’s winds grew weaker by the second. She hadn’t drained the Windwitch fully, and she hated that she wished she had.
She lost all sense of time as she flew, the moon on one side, the sun on the other. She was the winds that roared around her, the winds that sparked within her. She was her mother’s words and Alma’s. No one hurts my daughter. We didn’t have to be this way.
So much she hadn’t seen. So much she’d gotten wrong. Soon she would be with Safi, though. Soon she would make it all right again.
She reached the Solfatarra’s end. Anything that wasn’t blanketed in white caught her blurry eyes: a tower, crumbled like the ruins from the camp. A river, snaking and dark. And finally a splintered hole in the forest where a flying machine might have crashed down.
Descend, she told the magic. And it obeyed—but with no finesse and the magic fading fast. Ten feet of careful descent, no faster than the snow falling around her. Then a lurch, a drop, an abandonment of organs somewhere above.
Iseult yelped; Esme squealed. Then they flipped in midair and Iseult caught sight of Corlant’s storm anew. Only once had she seen anything like it: two months ago on the Nubrevnan coast when Merik Nihar’s Threadbrother had cleaved. Kullen had been a full Airwitch, and his Threads had stood no chance against the distant severing call of the Puppeteer.
Now, though, it wasn’t Corlant who cleaved. It was everyone around him, it was the sky and the forest and the Solfatarra. He sucked them and sapped them, gathering so much power he would be unstoppable.
Yet in the three booming heartbeats while Iseult and Esme hung suspended, Iseult realized there must be a price for what he did. There must be a reason he hadn’t used such magic before, and whatever the reason or cost might be, Iseult would find a way to use it.
She flipped again, Esme screeching in her ear, and once more gazed upon a winter-calm forest disrupted only by a fallen machine—and by Threads too.
A hundred of them clustered on a snaking trail nearby, all with shadowy Hell-Bard hearts. They hunted for Safi.
Another plummet, another yelp, and now broken trees crossed Iseult’s vision. Then a clearing dotted with Threads—Safi’s Threads, as beautiful as they had been in the Loom and with Caden’s Threads pulsing beside her.
And with two Windwitches in Cartorran red too. Threads of violence spun over Threads of yellow magic.
At that moment, the last of Iseult’s stolen power bled away. She plunged straight down. Air beat against her, cold and frostbitten. The winds of gravity pounded, scraping her acid-raw skin.
One hundred feet until she and Esme hit the ground.
Iseult had to do something. Plan, plan—she needed a plan. And time, more time.
Esme shrieked in her ear. Eighty feet until they hit.
They were going to die. Gretchya’s choice and Alma’s sacrifice would be for nothing.
Seventy feet.
Safi looked up. Her Threads glared with surprise. Then fear. Then recognition and love. It was warm and unabashed. The bolstering Iseult so desperately needed.
Fifty feet.
Iseult’s fingers extended, wide within the bandages, and she grabbed two sets of Threads. The lightning she knew so well seared against her scarred hands. She yanked and snapped anyway, clutching at the Threads right as the first tips of trees blurred past.
Then there it was: the power. New winds to surge into her body. Fresh, alive. Stolen too, but she would face that truth another time.
Slow, she commanded the magic, and her speed all but stopped. She became a feather. She became snow, falling in perfect time to the flakes drifting down. Until at last, her feet touched the earth—right between her newly created Cleaved—and she met Safi’s blue eyes.
FORTY-SIX
A vixen never hunts near her den.
As Vivia swam silently through cool moonlit waters, she couldn’t stop thinking that phrase. She’d read it once in a book plucked off her mother’s shelf, back before her father had removed all of Jana’s things. A vixen never hunts near her den.
It made sense that foxes traveled abroad to avoid bringing trouble near their litters. Too bad Vivia hadn’t remembered that phrase before leading the Dalmotti navy directly to her home. Then again, she hadn’t known people lived in Nihar, hadn’t known Noden’s Gift and its thrumming cicadas lived again, much less that they would dig so deeply into her heart. She just prayed her newest hunt, once more upon her own den’s shores, wouldn’t make things worse.
She had learned two things in her communication with Captain Kadossi of the Lioness. One, the entirety of Yoris’s hunters had been made prisoners of war, along with her crew from the Iris. And two, they would all be returned—alive—once Vivia and Vaness turned themselves in.
So Vivia and Vaness had agreed, and Baile’s Blessing now sailed in the same direction that Vivia swam. Slowly and on natural winds aimed for the Origin Well, it should arrive just in time for Vivia to board as if she’d been there all along.
First, though, she had work to do.
She coasted through the calm waters of a lull between tides. Below her, crepuscular fish awoke for their predawn meals and sharks skated over the ocean floor and sunken ships, dark shadows more interested in bite-size prey than her. She passed anemones unfurling and squid returning to the depths they called home. She glimpsed pelicans diving, crabs scuttling.
Stix had grown up by the sea, northeast of the Hundred Isles; Vivia had always envied her that.
And as Vivia had told Vaness only hours before, she felt more connected to each creature, each fleck of water and salt around her, than she’d ever felt before. Twenty-three years she had been bound to the tides, yet never had she felt as if she was the tides. She would have forgone breath entirely if her body hadn’t been smarter—hadn’t thrust her to the sea’s surface when the distant needles in her chest turned to ice picks.
At this hour, the world was nothing but vague shapes smeared in shadow. There was the Origin Well, its fox ears perked high. There was the shoreline, craggy and unwelcoming even with fresh forest to breathe and sigh. And there was the Dalmotti navy, still stationed upon the waves, like lions guarding their prey.
Once her lungs were happy, Vivia dove again, letting the water propel her as it desired, letting her magic glide in harmony alongside it. The water knew where she needed to be, and she trusted it to get her there—faster than any boat and with far more stealth. Soon, she reached the first warship.
Twelve of them floated atop the waves, creaking and swathed in algae. She needed to move quickly. Already, dawn lightened the skies. She’d taken too long swimming, been too engrossed in the reefs and their denizens—too willing to let the water lead and move at its languid, ancient pace.