“I will kill you,” she told him over and over again.
“No you won’t,” he replied each time.
After that, the journey through the palace had passed in a haze. Caden had carried Safi up from the bowels of the training area, across several blustery courtyards pink with sunrise, and finally into the palace stables. She was vaguely aware of Hell-Bards marching around them. Of Lev ordering attendants to inform His Imperial Majesty of the injury. Of a carriage being summoned and grooms rushing out with horses for the Hell-Bard.
A training injury, Caden kept telling them. Alert His Imperial Majesty. The Empress was hurt in training.
Then Safi was dumped into the carriage, and Lev and Caden were scrambling onto a seat beside her. Rather than help her sit up or check on her injury, though, Caden barked, “Wards,” and he and Lev clasped hands.
Their heads bowed low, and through the pain, Safi sensed power gathering. A swell of static. A magic her Hell-Bard senses instantly identified as our own. It took only moments before the wards were done. Then Caden and Lev released each other.
Caden knocked on the carriage’s front wall. The horses clopped into motion, and with a gurgle of fresh flames, Safi fell against her leather-bound bench. Each quake in the carriage sent eyeball-crushing pain throughout her.
“Why,” she ground out, “does it hurt so thrice-damned much?”
“Because that’s what knives do.” Lev removed her helm and offered a tight-lipped frown. “I was wondering when you’d set your mind on the Keep—and I was hoping you never would.”
“I warned her,” Caden defended, “but she insisted.”
“We all do.” Lev wagged her head. “We all do. Except this time, I would wager the Emperor himself will come deal with the damage.”
“She’s right.” Caden turned to Safi. She struggled to keep a lock on his face. “You won’t have much time at the Keep, and that”—he waved at her leg—“is only the beginning.”
“Beginning of what?” Safi tried to sit up, but Caden swatted her back down. She glared at him, though it quickly turned into an eye-rolling moan. “Is this carriage hitting every hole in the street?”
“Every one,” he replied.
Lev snorted. “When we get to the Keep, Safi, you’ll be taken right away to the special healing wing. Hell-Bards can’t be treated by magic, but there are … well, there are other ways of keeping us alive.”
Caden nodded. “And as the Empress, you’ll get a private room. You’ll need to wait until Henrick arrives before you make any sort of move, though. He will need to see you in the room being treated. Then you can ask him to leave for privacy’s sake. Hopefully, he agrees.”
“Shoulda stabbed her near her lady parts,” Lev muttered. “That would have kept him from coming in.”
Safi turned her next glare on Lev. “What do I do once he leaves the room?”
“I presume you want to see the Loom?” Caden asked. “It’s what all Hell-Bards want … no, need to see. The device we’re all bound to. The reason we can never escape.”
“Yes,” Safi snapped. “Obviously I want to see this Loom.” For some reason, that word Loom sounded familiar. Iseult had told her of looms—that much she remembered. But what they did or why Iseult had studied them … Nothing came to mind.
Perhaps because her entire existence was consumed by the hell-flaming agony of her thigh.
“Zander,” Lev inserted. “He’s at the Keep, and he’ll help us.”
“But you’ll need healing first.” Caden’s eyes flicked to Safi’s wound. His face scrunched up apologetically. “I might have, uh, stabbed a bit too deeply.”
“Might have?”
“Yeah, but if you’d gone any easier,” Lev countered, “then Henrick could’ve argued that a regular healer would’ve done the trick. Sorry, Safi.” Lev winced at her. “But to get into the Keep, an injury’s gotta be bad.”
Safi’s eyelids briefly shut. You agreed to this, you fool. You agreed to this. Actually, she’d specifically asked for it. “How much longer?”
Lev peeked behind a curtain. Then quite noticeably did not answer the question. “While Zander gets her to the Loom, what are me and you gonna do?” The question was addressed to Caden. “Pull another Kristazhoffen?”
He shook his head. “A big distraction won’t work here. As soon as Henrick knows what’s happened, he will use his power over Hell-Bards to track her.”
Lev blanched. “You don’t mean … You can’t mean…”
“What choice does she have?” Caden glanced at Safi. “While she and Zander are sneaking off to the Loom, you and I will pull an Isnie.”
“What’s an Isnie?” Safi asked—or rather, moaned—at the same moment Lev said, “Oh, that’s risky, Captain.” But she had a smile on her face as she spoke. Then she turned her attention to Safi and said, “Let me tell you about the time that me, Zander, and Caden here got stuck on an island called Isnie in the middle of the North Sea.”
As Lev settled into the story, Safi knew she was being handled. Distracted from whatever horrible future had made all the blood drain from Lev’s face and made Caden ask, What choice does she have? But her leg hurt too much to interrupt the tale, and her whole body hurt too much to demand answers. Caden’s roughshod bindings were already soaked through, and there was a very real chance she would pass out at any moment.
Not a chance, she realized as shadows swept in, but the reality.
Fourteen Days After the Earth Well Healed
“Have I ever told you the story of how the hedgehog came back to life?” Iseult gazes down at Owl, who shakes her head with such energy, her heretic’s collar clanks.
Five days she has been wearing it, and today is the first day she seems accustomed. They have made it to midmorning without a tantrum, without tears—not that Iseult would blame Owl if she started sobbing. The collar was the only way the child could enter Praga without her life consigned to the Hell-Bards. A magic like hers is “too dangerous to be kept free.”
Of course, Iseult wasn’t surprised when Owl refused and fought and tried to flee. Yet somehow Leopold coaxed her into compliance in the end, though he spoke no Nomatsi.
“Well,” Iseult says, slipping down to the woolen rug beside the child, “it happened long ago, when the gods still walked among us.” As she settles into the tale—a silly tale that ends in a song—Owl listens with rapt eyes and rapt Threads.
Her Hell-Bard protector, Zander, stands with his spine erect beside the bedroom door. He cannot speak Nomatsi; Owl cannot speak Cartorran; yet the two of them have a connection that transcends words. It is fascinating to watch, how their Threads have entangled. How thickly the sunset bond of family has already grown.
He is the one who put the collar on Owl five days ago. He cried afterward, when he thought no one was watching.
Iseult keeps her tale short this morning. Not merely because she is crushing her gown by sitting cross-legged, but also because she has somewhere to be. Somewhere that makes her stomach freeze and heart ice over.