Sensing Iseult had no reply, Gretchya turned away.
“Wait.”
Gretchya paused.
“D-do not hurt him, Mother. The Bloodwitch, I mean.”
“I will not, Iseult, because Threadwitches do not cause pain. That is only for the Void. Only for people like you.”
* * *
Aeduan knew the Threadwitch before him. Not well, but he had seen her at Corlant’s side in the caravan out of the east. Her blood smelled of lavender and lullabies, of cold earth and colder gemstones. He had always believed her an odd companion for the priest, but a willing one.
Now, as he stared at her in the light of a brazier’s glow, he realized he’d read her wrong. How else to explain this makeshift camp in the middle of a world of fog? He did not know if he should be impressed or annoyed.
Annoyed most likely, since he was now bound by chains to a column at the tent’s center. He had tried to break free as soon as the two women who’d captured him had fastened his shackles and left, but his efforts had proven useless. More than wood kept this column staked within the earth.
“Why do you hunt Iseult?” the Threadwitch asked in thickly accented Arithuanian, her voice detached. Intractable. Iseult watched from a nearby shadow, and Aeduan’s eyes cut to her as he said, “You know why. Just as you know you cannot escape him. He will find you here, exactly as he has always found you before.”
If the words bothered the Threadwitch, she gave no indication. She merely stared up her nose at the monk. It was a distinctive nose, snubbed and small. Iseult’s looked nothing like it.
“How many people follow you?” Gretchya asked, and Aeduan shrugged languidly. “I do not know.”
“How far behind is Corlant?”
Again, he shrugged. Again, he murmured: “I do not know.” But then he dipped his head toward Iseult and grinned. “She did real damage to him, so I doubt he will catch up anytime soon.”
The younger woman shifted her weight. Then shoved out of the shadow. “What is the creature that hunts me?” she demanded.
And Aeduan lifted his eyebrows.
“With silver Threads.” She strode closer, impatience in her movements though not upon her face. “Some monster. Ancient and huge.”
He laughed. Just a scoff at first, but then a full chuckle. “You tell too many stories.”
She blinked, her face betraying open surprise. It lasted only a heartbeat before she pursed her lips into nothingness. “How did you follow Owl and me?”
“I smelled you.”
“Liar. You can’t smell my blood.”
“I can.” He couldn’t. “You reek of despair and loneliness.”
The mother tensed, a mere fraction of movement. Then she snapped with atypical force: “If you do not offer us answers, then you are no use to us. When the tribe moves on, you will remain bound in chains. Corlant will not find you. No one will.”
He laughed again, this time lolling his head like a wolf might bay at the moon. They would not leave him here. Iseult would not leave him here, for the dark-giver loved the man who’d worn this body before, and she still—foolishly—believed he was in here. Humans were always desperate like that. Hope dies last, as the Old Ones used to say.
Gretchya twisted away from Aeduan, and in the language Iseult always used, she barked something at the guards. Then she strode away, each step surprisingly long for a woman as petite as she.
Iseult did not follow. Instead, she waited until her mother was gone from the tent before approaching Aeduan. He bared a grin as she cleared the gap between them. She was so near, her nose mere inches from his. “You are no match for me, Old One.”
Aeduan’s grin fell. He hadn’t realized she knew what he was.
“I went into death and brought him back, you see. The real Bloodwitch. The real Aeduan.” With gentle fingers she reached for his face … only to pause several inches away.
And for some reason that made no sense, the air between them thickened. Like static heat swelling before a summer storm. He wanted her to back away. He wanted her to keep coming.
“I know he still lives inside you,” she went on. Her fingers were not beautiful fingers, not shapely or fine. They were callused and too slender, with knuckles that felt too wide. He couldn’t look away from them.
“I saw him in the forest. I even see him now.” Her fingers inched closer. He did not move, he did not breathe. Then she dragged them sideways, floating just above his lips. Unbidden, his breath shuddered out.
“You know that I tell stories—something you can only know if you speak Nomatsi. Something you can only know if the real Aeduan still listens within.” Her hand fell, and before he could understand what she intended to do, she leaned in close. Lips to his ears, breath along his neck. “Mhe varujta, Aeduan. Te librahje ma-in, mhe varujta.”
She drew back, her golden eyes briefly settling on Aeduan’s face. Her lips briefly twitching with a smile. Then with fingers he hadn’t prepared for, she dug out the silver taler hanging at his collarbone and snapped the leather thong to which it was attached. “I’ll take this back now,” she said.
Moments later, she was gone.
* * *
There were times when the real Aeduan could reach the surface and break through the being that controlled him.
One moment, he was nothing but darkness. No sense of self, no up or down, no existence at all. Then suddenly, he would awaken—on the move, as if a rope yanked him fast, a ship retrieving its anchor.
Or a Heart-Thread retrieving its other half.
He heard her in those moments. So near to him, even if he could not see. He would recognize her voice anywhere, smooth as a scythe and twice as sharp. Perhaps if he just swam harder, just fought harder against the claws that pulled him down …
There it was. For a fraction of a moment, he had cleared the surface. Light had swept in, carrying her golden eyes, her pursed lips, and the teardrop scar upon her cheekbone.
She was smiling, a hateful smile he’d seen before and hoped never to see again. A smile directed inward. A smile to break men’s souls.
Then Aeduan was dragged under once more. Prey to be consumed at the bottom of the sea, his skin eaten off and bones picked clean. But that was all right. He could heal from that—and he would heal, because she would not let him die. She had saved him before, in the Aether Well deep in the Sirmayans, and she would save him again as long as their souls were bound.
Aether Well. The word licked through Aeduan’s mind as the shadows closed in around him. Something happened at the Aether Well. He couldn’t recall what or how, but suddenly he was certain: the Aether Well was where all of this had begun.
If only he could remember. If only he could break through and tell her …
But he couldn’t and he didn’t. At least not before the claws and the darkness grabbed hold and dragged him to the depths once more.
THIRTY-TWO
Safi strode confidently toward the Emperor’s quarters, down a hall she had hoped never to traverse again. The attendant she’d toppled several days before did not scurry up to meet her, but instead sent his comparably terrified partner.
“You cannot see the Emperor right now,” the man said, bowing so low his head almost touched his knees. “He is detained.”