But Safi isn’t having it. Her knees quiver, and her Threads quiver too, with sapphire loss. With tan confusion. Then she hops off the windowsill, a burst of energy and eruption of muscles so she can pace the floor. This is her childhood bedroom, one of the only inhabitable rooms in this crumbling wing of the estate.
As she lists out the pieces of their plan—carefully crafted, meticulously plotted—Iseult’s mind wanders back outside to the clouds and the distant mountains, mere shadows against the night. She doesn’t like the plan she and Safi have made, but it’s the best they have. Eron fon Hasstrel might hang for treason any day now; the only thing keeping him alive is Safi’s promise to marry the Emperor.
And marry him she will, for what better way to get close to him than on a wedding night? What better way to claim power than to incapacitate him exactly as he has incapacitated so many, including Safi’s uncle? Including the three Hell-Bards who have become her Thread-family?
Safi will imprison an emperor exactly as he has imprisoned so many Hell-Bards, and then she will sit upon the throne, finishing the plan Eron and Mathew and Habim began twenty years ago. Except Safi and Iseult will have done it on their own terms, without bloodshed along the way.
And Iseult will follow Safi every step of the way because that is what a Threadsister must do. Because no one can protect Safi like Thread-family, and because this is all Iseult is ever meant to be: the one who completes what Safi initiates. The one who cuts the purse while Safi distracts.
Yet Iseult’s gaze lingers on those mountains. Not so different from the Sirmayans, where the world had been simple. Pure. Silent. Where each day had begun with clarity and focus, no Threads to confuse her. No people to get in the way.
Iseult doesn’t want those days back. Of course she doesn’t. She has only just been reunited with Safi. She has only just been made whole again. And yet …
The mountains call to her. The silence tugs.
No, it is more than silence. Visions are forming in her head that shouldn’t be there—that don’t belong to her. And there is something outside. Tiny, white, and scampering this way through the night. A streak that Iseult would never have seen if it hadn’t started talking to her.
If she hadn’t started talking to her.
I am here, the weasel seems to say. I have come for you.
THREE
Iseult found food sooner than she’d expected—sooner than she had even dared hope. The soldiers had commandeered a shepherd’s hut not far from the road. Tidy, well stocked, and with a campfire still smoldering.
She quickly scanned the surrounding conifers for Threads, but no human was near. She did, however, discover two shaggy horses beside the hut that she recognized as the local mountain breed. They were thoroughly disinterested in her, while she was very interested in them. Such beasts would make her journey through the Ohrins much easier.
“Thank you,” she breathed to no god in particular. Trickster, perhaps. Or Wicked Cousin. She’d lost all right to address Moon Mother.
She reached out with her mind, aiming vaguely south. Vaguely downhill. Come, she told the weasel. And make sure you avoid the road.
A question came in response—more niggling in the back of Iseult’s mind than actual words, for the weasel had no voice. She had only impressions and feelings for Iseult to interpret.
Right now, the creature shivered with joy and wanted to know how Iseult’s slaughter had played out. Iseult didn’t want to remember it, though. Not for the weasel, not for herself. So she closed off her mind and shoved into the hut.
The door slammed backward, hitting something wooden. A cot, Iseult soon discovered as she stepped inside. Gray light fanned over seven bedrolls neatly arranged across the earthen floor. Everything stank of old sweat and older blood. On a rickety table at the hut’s center was an iron pot with a ladle poking out the side.
At the sight of it, dizziness washed over Iseult, so strong it almost stole her legs. But she was already moving, already lurching for what she prayed might be inside. She hit the table, dropped her staff, and hauled the iron toward her.
Stew. Within it was stew.
With shaking hands, she spooned cold, congealed liquid into her mouth. Stringy with unknown meat, it was the most delicious thing Iseult had ever tasted. She chewed, she swallowed, she slurped in more until it started coming back up again and she had to heave into a nearby bedroll.
Then she wiped her mouth and ate some more. Only when Owl’s pale Threads burned into her periphery did she finally stop.
Using her staff to steady herself, she gathered up the soiled bedroll and stumbled outside, where she found the girl just shuffling toward her from the forest’s pine shadows. A sleek white weasel scuttled nearby, her black-tipped tail flicking sideways.
Iseult sensed frustration in the weasel’s mind, but she offered no response. After all, it wasn’t Owl’s fault she was tired. The girl had walked for days up a mountain, and just like Iseult, Owl had lost everything and everyone that had mattered to her. First Blueberry had been left behind in the Sirmayans. Then she had lost her magic to the Hell-Bard’s heretic’s collar. And finally, she had lost all warmth and safety when she and Iseult had been forced to flee Praga two weeks ago.
It had been a night of hell-fires. A night of terror and desperation through a sprawling city where Nomatsis were hated and Hell-Bards hunted here. Iseult and Owl had barely escaped alive. If not for the weasel and the tools she’d given Iseult, they would still be back there. And they would probably be dead.
The heavy wooden collar at Owl’s neck clinked with each of her steps. The furs draped across her body—much too large—scraped over the ground. Iseult took Owl’s hand, too cold, and guided her toward the hut. “I will start a fire,” she said.
“Food?” Owl asked.
“I’ll get that too.” Then she added, “Fresh food,” because she had been selfish and finished the stew by herself.
Owl paused before the hut’s entrance, faded Threads tinted with mustard concern. “There is no one inside,” Iseult assured her, but Owl was focused sideways, on where the shaggy horses poked their heads around the hut’s side.
Before Iseult’s eyes, Owl’s Threads reached for them, straining and hopeful … until they hit an invisible wall an arm’s length away because the Hell-Bard’s heretic’s collar blocked her Earthwitchery. It was not so different from the golden chains the Emperor forced Hell-Bards to wear, except that those permanently cleaved away magic, severed away souls, and bound each Bard to the Emperor. The collar simply blocked a person’s magic from use.
As always happened when grief and despair claimed Owl’s Threads, tears began to erupt at the edges of her eyes, and Iseult could do nothing but stare. Stony. Silent. Useless.
She wanted to do more than simply hold Owl’s hand. She wanted to take the child into her arms and hold her. Tell her everything would be all right, that she would keep her safe and warm and fed. But instead, Iseult did nothing because no one had ever done it for her and she did not know how.
Then Owl’s Threads flashed with pale pain. “You’re hurting me.”
Iseult released her, snatching back her hand as if scalded. This was not the first time she had squeezed Owl too tightly, nor the first time her body had betrayed emotions she’d told herself she did not feel.