As Corlant’s long fingers curled around the man’s Threads, they grew fainter, fainter. The man’s body limper and more slumped.
“Don’t,” begged the woman. She did not rise from the mud. “Please, please leave him—”
A streak of gray bolted into the yard. Snarling, barking, the dog from before surged around the Purists and aimed straight for Corlant.
“No,” the Herdwitch mumbled, a desperate, broken sound. Then the last of his Herdwitch Threads swelled into Corlant, like a vine coiling around a tree. Corlant laughed, and as the dog reached him, teeth bared and legs ready to leap, Corlant snapped a single hand toward the dog.
The dog stopped in its tracks. Its fur settled, its teeth vanished behind suddenly loose jowls. A whine wisped from its throat.
“No,” the Herdwitch mumbled again, his legs buckling beneath him. But he could not stop Corlant any more than he could stop his fall. Corlant swiped his hand toward the well, and the dog obeyed. Six loping paces before it reached the stone rim. A single vertical leap and it dropped over. It dropped in.
Half a heartbeat later, its body hit dry ground with a yelp and snap of bones. An empty well, a pointless death. Owl’s wails filled the midmorning sky.
* * *
The Hell-Bard training “space” was a misleading term. It was, in fact, a vast complex beneath the newest wings of the palace. Three levels beneath the earth, the cold of the Stonewitch-carved caverns washed over Safi. The heat from the springs—and Leopold’s secret bath—did not reach here.
At dawn, Lev guided Safi into the long main room where Hell-Bards circled at a brisk jog. Several spread apart to allow Safi into their ranks. Her lungs seared within a single lap of two hundred steps. By four hundred steps, the burn had moved to her stomach. To her thighs. But she welcomed it—sank into the sensation of pushing through pain and running like she hadn’t run in days.
She wondered if Uncle Eron had ever trained here. She wondered what he had been like before he became a drunk. She had never known that person. For her, his very Aether was made of bitterness and alcohol.
Eight hundred steps, and Safi was sprinting.
One thousand steps, and the other Hell-Bards had stopped running and had paired off for other training. The sounds of clanging metal, thumping arrows, and flesh pounding into flesh soon echoed off stone walls. Sweat, steel, tallow—the smells blurred together in Safi’s nose, familiar and palliative.
She didn’t join them in their training. Instead, she kept running. Three weeks of being in Praga, but she was no closer to her uncle than she had been in Azmir. It had seemed such a simple plan: bring down an emperor, then hand over his crown to an heir better suited. But nothing had gone as expected, and now Safi was trapped and useless and alone.
With Iseult countless miles away.
And with a favored owed to a raider admiral. Safi wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but she didn’t like it. It was one more thing she’d done wrong, and she had the blister around her thumb to prove it.
Safi sprinted faster, faster, until nausea charged up from her stomach. Until black floated across her vision and her breaths were so shallow that they eventually stopped billowing at all.
Then and only then did she stagger to a stop and drop her hands to her knees. Wheezing, she stared at the sand-covered ground. Her golden noose dipped out from her shirt. Once it would have been her Threadstone dangling there.
She would get that back, though. Somehow. Just as she would find Iseult and she would find her uncle.
Safi had asked Leopold the night before if he knew where Eron was. His denial had been an honest one. Yet, despite talking for hours and despite never catching Leopold in any lies, Safi had returned to her bedroom with the nagging sense that there was more to what he’d said. That he’d somehow hidden lies from her by wrapping them in pretty truths.
She had no one else to help her, though. The Hell-Bards were as bound to Henrick as she was. So for now, to Leopold she must turn.
“Heretic.”
Caden’s voice filtered through Safi’s breaths, and when she hauled up her thousand-pound head, she found him slouching nearby. Comfortably. Patiently, even. In one hand he held a practice sword; in the other, a real one.
“Fight me.” He offered Safi the true blade, its steel glinting in the cellar’s cold light.
And Safi couldn’t help it: she smiled. “I believe the title you meant to say was Your Imperial Majesty.” She took the sword, pleased to find it well balanced in her hand.
“No,” Caden countered with a slight smile. “I said exactly what I intended.” He charged.
Safi twirled sideways. His attack swung wide, but he quickly altered course, curving in for a follow-up. His wooden sword hit Safi’s steel. Chop, parry, thrust, riposte. Safi’s muscles sang with each movement. Her blood thrilled. All the sweat from running that had cooled across her skin was now hot and slick again.
“I need to know,” she said between grunts, between attacks, “how to get … into Hell-Bard Keep.” Nothing in Safi’s movements was graceful, but sometimes a person just needed to pummel things. She was also a month out of practice.
“Is that why you came to train?” Caden’s lips quirked as he easily outmaneuvered each of her swings. “And here I thought you missed me.”
She laughed and swung again. “I missed beating you up.”
“And I’ve missed being beat up, Safi.”
“It’s Your Imperial Majesty now.” She ducked a swipe, catching it with her blade.
“Not down here,” he countered. “Down here, you’re one of us. We’re all heretics, all Hell-Bards.” To prove this point, he swooped his practice blade against her next attack, flipping the wooden blade of his sword around her wrist and yanking.
Safi dropped her sword. Steel clanged to the ground. If his blade had been real, her hand would have fallen too. But his blade wasn’t real, and she wasn’t done with this fight. With all her strength, she pushed into Caden. His elbows crumpled in, the wooden sword pressed flat against him, and with her free hand, Safi grabbed his chin.
She moved forward, ready to brace behind him just as she had done to Henrick’s attendant only two days before. Except Caden was trained, so when her hip cocked against his, he slung an arm around her shoulders …
And brought her down too.
She landed on her stomach. Caden landed on his back, and for several seconds, neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. Safi just stared into the sand and tried to get her lungs and skull working again. Her wrist hurt. Her weak ankle too.
“If,” she panted out eventually, “I’m a Hell-Bard now, then why won’t you tell me how to get into the Keep?” She swiveled her head and found Caden watching her. Sweat glistened on his red face; the scar on his chin stood out white and long.
And not for the first time, Safi was struck by how thrice-damned handsome he was. No wonder he tricked you so easily in Veñaza City. He had been the Chiseled Cheater then. Now, he was Caden fitz Grieg—and now, Safi knew she could trust him through hell-fires and back.
“Why do you need to get into the Keep?” His chest moved in time to his shallow breaths. “Trust me when I say the Keep is not a place you want to go. It’s not a place I or any other Hell-Bard wants to go. It is…” He hesitated, as if searching for the right word. “Bad.”