She could not explain how she sensed that or why. Magical items were simply a bit more colorful, a bit more dimensional than anything else in her leached world. Witches too, and without any effort, her brain simply knew what witchery was before her and how powerful.
Sometimes it felt as if the information came from some vast, collective consciousness. Perhaps directly from the magic that bound all Hell-Bards as one. But when Safi had asked Lev about that, the woman had simply shaken her head and said, Word of advice, Imperial Majesty: thinking leads to hoping, and nothin’ is more futile when you’re a Hell-Bard.
When Safi looked at her Truth-lens now, it gleamed against the desk’s glossy wood, and as soon as her fingers touched the brass …
Ah, there it was. The certainty trilling down the back of her neck that this was Truth magic—and what a strange, awful feeling that was. To stare at the only remnants of her own magic. Untouchable, unusable. Because, of course, magic didn’t work on Hell-Bards. It could not harm them, it could not trick them. Whatever happened when the noose cinched into place, it rendered all magical effects obsolete.
Safi couldn’t resist trying, though. She bent her head farther beneath the screen and pressed her eye to the glass.
It was like peering into a kaleidoscope, but with no rhyme or reason to the patterns. She trained it on her right hand, and her Aether Witchmark, only three weeks old, turned a variety of colors thanks to the stones and threads within. No longer a hollow circle, but a jagged, broken ellipse.
She’d never used her invention before. After pouring all of her energy and the false half of her magic into the various parts, Safi had attended Empress Vaness’s birthday party—and then that party had ended in tragedy. So, so much tragedy that even now, she struggled to fully fathom it all.
Tragedy that could have been prevented. Tragedy she had caused.
At that thought, the lens turned white.
Safi snapped back her head, blinking. She shook the lens; quartz rattled. Then, after a quick scrub at her eye, she peered through the device again, this time fixing it on Leopold’s letter. You know how much I burn for you. Safi dragged her gaze across the colorfully contorted sentence, mouthing each word to herself.
The lens went white again.
And Safi snapped back her head again. Surely the magic wasn’t working. Surely the change in color was not a sign that something was false. Instinct sent her fingers rubbing at her eyes, though she knew perfectly well her vision was keen.
Ducking under the screen once more, she peered through the lens and whispered, “I am in love with Leopold fon Cartorra.”
Oh, how the Truth-lens turned white at those words, and oh, how Safi smiled. The magic was working, even if she had no idea why. Perhaps it was simply because the lens was her own creation, hewn from her own witchery.
Either way, it changed everything.
Yes, she might be bound to Emperor Henrick. Yes, her magic might have been sliced away from her, lost for good. But she was no longer powerless, and with the Truth-lens, she had an advantage no one could ever suspect. Least of all Henrick.
Smiling—her first true, happy smile in two weeks—Safi finally grabbed for the inkpot and quill. Now that she had her Truth-lens, there was no reason not to meet him. No reason, in fact, not to trust him, since she could catch him in his lies.
My dear Polly,
It brings me such joy to remember our summer together, and yes, dancing with you tonight brought it all crashing back. I have resisted being near you, but can no longer ignore how much my heart calls. Or how much my body. Seeing you dance each night was torture.
I will see you tomorrow in the Winter Garden at the tenth chimes. The wait until that moment will be agony.
Yours always,
Safiya
* * *
When Iseult awoke, she was shaking from cold. Somehow she had fallen to the shepherd’s hut’s floor, and now she stared up at a plank ceiling flickering with shadows. Everything hurt. Her head, her eyes, her lungs. Distantly, she felt the weasel scramble on her lap. She heard the creature squeaking with alarm. “Hush,” she tried to say, but her throat was burned raw.
No, not burned raw. Frozen. She’d screamed so much when the souls had pulled her down. Before he had shoved her back into life. Surely that had not been him though. Not in the Dreaming, not in the Hell-Bard Loom. But there was no other explanation. Corlant det Midenzi had found her once more.
Ever since his cursed arrow had failed to kill her in the Midenzi tribe, he had hunted her. He’d sent raiders after her in the Contested Lands; he’d sent Aeduan after her too. And now he’d finally found her in the Hell-Bard Loom of all places.
I will be waiting, he’d said, and Iseult couldn’t help but laugh at that. A huffy, broken sound—because he would be waiting for all eternity if he expected her to come to him.
With no grace and limbs that roared in protest, Iseult hauled herself back onto her stool.
“I think,” she told the weasel, “I was in the Hell-Bard Loom.”
She felt Esme crawl up her leg. Then suddenly the creature was digging her cold nose into Iseult’s face. Images erupted in Iseult’s mind, not so different from what Iseult had just seen: a gray world filled with darkened souls.
“Yes.” Iseult nodded. Her eyes hurt too much to keep them open. “It looked just like that. But how did you navigate it? The Severed spirits overwhelmed me.”
This question seemed to puzzle the weasel. She curled around Iseult’s neck, clicking in her throat as if saying, I did not have that problem.
And Iseult sighed—because of course the weasel hadn’t. She had had an entire diary to learn from and years of practice. Iseult had only a handful of pages and two weeks.
“There was someone else there,” she went on, finally lifting her head from her hands. “I saw Corlant. The Purist priest you knew by a different name.”
At first, the weasel offered no reaction. Silence filled the hut for several moments, and Iseult thought perhaps the creature had forgotten their conversation from a month and a half ago. Then suddenly the creature leaped off Iseult’s shoulder and darted for one of the diary pages. With tiny teeth, she chomped down and dragged it to Iseult.
It was a description of making the first Loom—the Hell-Bard Loom Iseult had just fallen into. Incomplete, but with a basic illustration of the Threads binding each Cleaved soul to a person at the center of it all: Portia. She had built the first Loom by cleaving the other Void Paladin, by binding that woman’s powerful Threads to stone.
At the Loom in Poznin, Esme had been the person at the center of it all. She had made the Loom by cleaving the very Air Well itself and binding hundreds of souls to her own. She had controlled them, and upon her death, those Cleaved had been left behind.
“You’re saying Corlant is at the center of the Hell-Bard Loom?” Iseult shook her head. “That makes no sense. He has no connection to Cartorra or the Hell-Bards, no reason to bind such people to him.” Besides, Iseult had seen Henrick dominate his Hell-Bards. He was in control. “Corlant must simply be able to dream-walk. Eridysi did it. You did it. The Paladin Portia did it. Perhaps all Voidwitches are able.”
The weasel shook her head, unconvinced. Then she nudged Iseult’s jaw and a new image formed. One of cleaving, one of Threads.
The message was clear: if Iseult wanted to understand the Hell-Bard Loom and free Safi, then she needed more power. And to get more power, she needed to go to Poznin and claim the rest of Eridysi’s diary. Only then could she could march back across Cartorra to rescue Safi, no fear of Hell-Bards. No fear of Henrick or Corlant or anyone.