“Help me.”
“I think not.”
Iseult’s gaze flitted to the blade. Then back to him. He wouldn’t use it. “You owe me, Old One.”
A sniff. The knife held steady. Amusement and curiosity wove across his Threads. “Do I?”
“I need to find Corlant.”
“And I need to deliver you to him.”
“You don’t trust him, though,” Iseult replied. “He says he’ll give you my body, but you know that isn’t true.”
“And will you give it to me?”
She shook her head. “You don’t want it.”
“Oh, but I think I do.” Purple flashed across his Threads, except it was not the purple of hunger—not quite. It was too pale for that, yet too dark to be desire. “I spent a thousand years in death, Dark-Giver. I have no plans to return.”
“And my body is the only means to keep you from it?”
“Your body is the only means to send me to it. Unless I control it.”
Iseult’s brain instantly sharpened at those words—and Aeduan instantly tensed. His Threads paled with panic. He hadn’t meant to say such words. Hadn’t meant to give her such power.
The weasel chittered in Iseult’s mind. Esme had heard him too, and she also marveled at the words’ significance. Iseult’s body could send Old Ones back to death. Was that why Corlant so desperately wanted her? But then where do the Threadstones fit in?
“Do not play games.” Aeduan stood taller. “You were a fool to leave me in that tent with a magic unfettered, and you are a fool for thinking I might help you.”
He lifted the knife toward her neck.
And Iseult curled back her lips. A false snarl came with surprising ease. After all, she hadn’t expected him to join her right away. “You are the weakest of them. You bow to Corlant. You fear him—he who was the first Hell-Bard. But I am more powerful than Corlant. I will be the one who destroys him in the end. And I will destroy you too, if you do not choose well.”
With each word Iseult spoke, Aeduan’s head tipped back more. Until he stared at her from the very bottoms of his eyes. His Threads melted between green concentration and rosy amusement. “You would never harm the monk’s body.”
“You have no idea what I would do.”
His head tipped even further. “You have already failed once against Corlant. Why would you succeed this time?”
“Is removing his eye a failure?”
Again, he sniffed. Again, the amusement winked over his Threads. And Iseult set her jaw. She was stasis. She was power. She was the dark-giver, and this Old One needed to see that she was the winning side as long as she kept her own body.
It was at that moment that Owl finally showed interest in Aeduan. Her Threads melted into the sunset shade of family as she scrabbled to her feet. The collar scraped against the tree. “You’re not like the first Aeduan,” she said in Nomatsi. “But you could be.” Then she smiled. A brilliant thing made all the more brilliant by her burning, loving Threads.
And though Aeduan couldn’t see such magic, he clearly sensed it. He swallowed. His nostrils flared, and Iseult knew instantly that the real Aeduan was listening. That he understood Owl’s Nomatsi words.
Iseult pounced. “Will you help us go west? To Praga?”
“What … is there?” He stared at Owl, whose little fingers clutched at his clothes. His knife still hovered, though it had dropped several inches.
Iseult reached into her cloak, ready to remove the diary and explain that she needed to reach Praga, that she could help him become what he wanted to be, but at that moment, a screech filled the afternoon. It scraped down Iseult’s spine. It slashed into her eardrums.
Aeduan’s head snapped toward the sound. It had come from the Nomatsi camp, and though Iseult couldn’t actually sense the Threads at this distance, she had no doubt what they would be: silver Threads.
“Mother.” It was the first word to hit Iseult’s mind and cross her lips.
The monster from the forest had finally caught up. Which made Gretchya right: she had saved the Nomatsis while Iseult had condemned them.
Iseult rounded on Owl. “You must hide.” She hefted the girl into her arms. Owl didn’t resist, although it wasn’t fear that made her malleable so much as the Painstone, still thrumming and bright.
A blessing, that thing. With it, Owl was unbothered by the distant shrieking. With it, she was content to be shoved onto the lowest branches of the spruce, where Esme hid in silence. Even when Iseult stuffed the diary into their new sack and shoved the sack into her tiny arms, her Threads showed only calm.
To her surprise, Aeduan didn’t interfere.
“You must stay here,” Iseult told the child. “No matter what you hear, you must stay until I come back for you. Do you understand?”
“What if you don’t come back?” Owl’s face winked down from above, eyes huge as her namesake’s. So much trust in that stare. So much trust in those Threads.
Iseult wondered if she’d ever looked at Gretchya that way.
“I will come back,” Iseult promised, a fierceness in her voice that sent cyan surprise showering up Owl’s Threads. It surprised Iseult too. But she meant what she’d said: “I’ll come back for you. But you must stay safe, all right? And hidden. The weasel will watch out for you.”
Owl tucked back against the trunk, nodding, Still, no fear tainted her Threads and even her usual distaste for Esme, now curling onto her tiny lap, was nowhere to be seen. It was only a matter of time, though, before fear and hate took hold. The Painstone wouldn’t last forever.
Iseult would simply have to return before that happened.
She gave Owl’s hand a single squeeze before releasing her. “I’ll be back soon.” Then she latched on to Aeduan’s sleeve and pulled him into a sprint out of the spruce’s branches. Her last glimpse of Owl was of hazel eyes unfaltering and of a child’s Threads, reaching and green.
* * *
When at last Henrick appeared in the study, he wore no masks—and almost no clothes. A dressing robe covered his body, sapphire blue and actually flattering.
He drew up short at the sight of Safi. His eyes bulged, his lips curled back, and if he’d been wearing his belt, she had no doubt he would have grabbed for the chain.
“Who let you in?”
“I let myself in.” The Threadstones and chain felt like beacons in her pocket. She itched to touch them. Instead, she cracked her knuckles on the chair’s padded arm. “As your empress, I do not see why I cannot enter your quarters—though don’t worry, I have no interest in entering your bedchamber. Particularly when it’s, um … occupied.”
There was danger in goading Henrick. Safi knew that. But she also knew that not goading him came with other risks—namely, his own suspicions. The Safi-who-had-not-just-stolen-from-him would have been flippant, so the Safi-who-had-just-stolen-from-him had to be flippant as well.
Her calculation was successful. Henrick stomped toward her and glowered down. “Why are you here?”
“I want to know something.”
“And?” His snaggletooth jutted outward. His posture sank inward. He was, before Safi’s eyes, reassembling his usual mask.