“I don’t.”
“Of course you do.” Kahina flipped up her hand and flames ignited around her fingers. “Tell me where you found them.”
Where I found them, Stix thought. Not where they are. And just like that, she saw a solution—a bargaining weight that tipped the scales in her favor. Kahina was a Master of the Ring; her power was vast. She could fling prisoners into the arena as easily as she emptied her pipe bowl. Which meant she could also …
“Free the prisoners, and I’ll tell you where I found the blade and glass.”
Kahina’s pipe ignited. “I could free a few.”
“All of them.”
Kahina scoffed. Then, after several seconds when Stix offered nothing else, she gave an outright laugh. “You cannot be serious. I can do many things, Water Brawler, but freeing every prisoner from the Ring is not one of them. Many people own them.”
“Then buy them.”
Kahina’s left eye twitched, a movement Stix would never have noticed without her spectacles. Behind her, the Ring’s chaos continued unabated, while beside Stix, the cat stretched onto its feet. Moments misted past. Stix refused to break eye contact with Kahina.
Vivia would have been proud.
“All right,” Kahina said eventually. Her smirk loosened into a smile, as if this entire arrangement had been her idea and now she were the one with all the bargaining power. “Give me a day, and I will acquire all prisoners. Do we have a deal?”
“Only once you agree to free them.”
“Yes, yes.” She swatted the air. “I will give them to you, and you may free them. Now do we have a deal?”
Stix matched Kahina’s smile, while at her shins, the gray cat nuzzled and purred. “Yes,” she replied. “We have a deal.”
“Excellent.” Kahina tapped her jade ring. “Now tell me: where did you find the blade and glass?”
TWENTY-FOUR
Iseult did not sleep. She couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to—not while Owl shivered on the bunk beside her. Not with Eridysi’s diary so near. Her goal for two weeks, the one item she needed to face Hell-Bards with, was only paces away.
For hours now, Iseult had mulled Corlant’s words. His easy declaration that he was the first Portia had ever claimed confounded her. Yes, Lev had described the first Hell-Bard and the saint that Purists worshipped as Midne, a woman who’d lived a thousand years ago. And yes, there were people who could live a thousand years, born and reborn. The same soul passing into different bodies …
Paladin. A word relegated to myth. Some called them knights, some called them witches, and most called them nothing at all because they had been forgotten so long. But could Corlant possibly be such a person?
For the thousandth time Iseult wished the weasel were near. Where are you? she thought. Please, come to us. Please help. But the weasel did not reply.
Midnight bloomed outside. Another Threadwitching night with the moon bright and inescapable through the cabin’s lone window. At least, in all her hours of wakefulness, Iseult had managed to almost remove the wool in her mouth. It had taken constant jaw wiggling, constant pressure from her tongue, and repeated shifting of her soft palate—like she was clearing a yawn—but all the effort, all the ache building in her face had paid off.
Just a little more pushing, a little more straining … There. She spat it to the ground. Triumph wefted through her muscles.
She glanced across the room, at the pale, sleeping Threads that twirled above another cot: Corlant. While on the floor near his feet slept Aeduan and Evrane. Outside, two Purists stood guard, though their attention was weak and one was half asleep.
“Owl,” Iseult tried to whisper. All that came out was a filmy croak. She smacked her lips and swallowed. Then: “Owl.”
This time, her voice cooperated. And this time, Owl’s eyes shot to hers. Surprise rippled across her Threads. She couldn’t speak, her own mouth still full, but at least she was now listening—and at least her white terror had briefly misted away.
“Are you hurt?” Iseult asked.
Owl nodded, a stiff movement, before craning her neck toward her arms and wrists.
Iseult winced. “I know. The bindings hurt me too.” At first, it had felt like needles. Then wasps. Then fire. Until eventually she had lost all feeling in her left arm. Her right arm would soon follow. “You should try to sleep, Owl. If you can. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Owl did not look impressed by this. Worse, white was once more spreading across her Threads. The same dangerous panic, spreading too fast.
But Iseult couldn’t do what she’d done before to calm the child. She could not give Owl a stone to focus on, an anchor to ground her in this world. It was a tactic she’d learned from Evrane of all people, and a move Iseult had first tried beside a bridge north of Tirla, beneath a moon not so different from the one outside.
Right now, all Iseult had were her words. They would have to be enough.
“Long ago,” she said softly, invoking the first words of every Nomatsi story, “when the gods walked among us…”
* * *
There was a goddess named Owl. She was Moon Mother’s youngest sister, and everyone knew she was Moon Mother’s favorite.
Each night, they roamed the forests together. Owl would take her animal form and patrol the trees and life within, while Moon Mother passed from tribe to tribe, village to village, checking on her people and ensuring they were safe.
Moon Mother did not know why, but she was afraid. Ever since she had guided the Nomatsis through the Sleeping Lands centuries before, fear had been building inside her—fear that something would happen to the people she loved so dearly.
Years of nightly searching, though, had turned up nothing of concern. Oh, the other gods had their problems. Wicked Cousin Weasel had a cruel streak, and Little Brother Trickster was always making trouble simply because he could. Meanwhile Middle Sister Swallow lost her temper too often, and Old Uncle of the Tides regularly forgot his duties because he always fell asleep. But Moon Mother did not worry about them. They were her Thread-family, and she trusted them as if their souls were hers.
One night, while Moon Mother and Owl were on their nightly patrols, Owl found herself in a forested valley—one she knew well, where mountain bats hunted and humans dared not tread. There she found a badger, dead for days and out of place upon the detritus floor. Instantly, Owl knew it was Trickster up to one of his games.
You see, one of his favorite pranks was to inhabit the corpses of the forest. He would hide within them and wait for one of his Thread-siblings or Thread-cousins to walk by … Then he would leap free and lock them in chains. Sometimes he left his family for hours like that; once, he left Middle Sister Swallow for an entire year.
He had never been so foolish as to play this trick on Owl, though, for with her connection to the forest and all living things, she could always see right through his disguises.
And she saw right through him on that night too.
Normally, she would have turned away, but for once, she felt mischievous. So she pretended not to notice Trickster hiding in the badger’s body. She changed into her human form and wandered past him, humming into the autumn night.