Page 25 of Bloodwitch
By the Hagfishes, Merik prayed Ryber was all right. Cam too.Please, Noden. Please.
“You,” Merik tried to say. “Who?”
“My name is Esme, and it is thanks to me that you are still alive. Andthis…” She bent forward to tap at the wood screwed around his neck. More dust puffed from the mortar’s bowl. “It blocks your magic, so there is no need to try your witchery. On me, or on anyone else.”
At those words, the hourglass of Merik’s panic snapped around. Sand toppled and spun. He inhaled as deeply as he could, lungs bowing against screaming ribs, and hepulledat the power that always lived there. At the air, at the winds, at the currents in the world around him.
He came back with nothing. Nothing but dust from the mortar wafting up his nose. He coughed—which earned more laughter as the young woman skipped away. She returned with a porcelain cup three coughs later.
“Drink,” she commanded, and Merik obeyed.
The water, though strongly sulfuric, was perfection against his spasming throat. While he drank, Esme sauntered across the room to a desk heaped with books. Unlit candles in varying states of decay slouched on every available space: the desk, the floor, on stones pushing free from the wall, and on the sill of a larger window overlooking the cloud-spun sky.
An evening sky, he guessed. Still, though, he summoned the words from his thick skull: “What… day is it?”
“On the Nomatsi calendar, it is the twenty-seventh day beneath the Eight Moon. On the first peoples’ calendar—the ones who lived here a thousand years ago—we are on the twenty-seventh day ofStorms.” Esme peeked back at Merik, a sly smile on her lips. “But I imagine, simple as you are, Prince, that you wish to know the day on the ‘common’ calendar.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a word implies ease and choice, doesn’t it? But in truth thecommoncalendar was forced upon us with whips and chains.”
Throughout this long speech, Merik said nothing. Showed nothing on his face beyond the truth of pain in his ribs and spine. Even his unfocused gaze he kept pointed toward Esme, so that she would not sense how he took note of every space in the tower, every possible weapon or potential tool. She had referred to Threads, so she must be some kind of Threadwitch—which would also explain the assortment of stones piled on a low table beneath the main window.
She had also mentioned awakening the Fury inside Kullen.Thatwas a question Merik would have to poke at later, though.
“On thecommoncalendar,” Esme finished, “we are on the two hundred and forty-third day in the nineteenth year since the signing of the Twenty Year Truce.”
So Merik had lost only a few hours, then. Kullen must have flown his unconscious body directly here after destroying that stone, which meant he had not attempted to hunt down Ryber or Cam. One small boon amidst this maddening storm.
After draining the final sips of water, Merik cleared his throat. “They… will have to start again.”
At Esme’s puzzled look, Merik wondered if perhaps he had chosen the wrong words or conjugated improperly. But then the young woman’s expression cleared, and her delighted, spine-twisting laugh skipped out once more. She even plunked down her mortar and pestle to clap her hands.
“You mean the calendar! They will have to start it again—yes, yes, they will, for the Truce has ended.Oh,how fun. You actually have a brain, Prince. I would never have guessed it to look at you, but you are not like my other Cleaved, are you?” Another clap, and this time she hopped to her feet to prance toward a stack of books at the opposite wall.
My other Cleaved.With that phrase, a thousand questions clamoredto life in Merik’s brain. Who this woman was, why she possessed Cleaved—or for that matter,howshe possessed Cleaved… And why she’d spoken of Merik as if he were one of them.
More troubling, though, was the fact that Merik felt no alarm. No panic like before. Only a gathering warmth behind his lungs and a slow dissipation of the pain.
“It makes sense, I suppose,” she went on, snagging a worn tome off the pile. “You are not directly bound to my Loom, and I did not cleave you intentionally like the rest of my servants. Nor did I fully cleave your Threadbrother. Itriedto.” She flipped open the book, her sigh brushing atop flapping pages. “But he is made of so many people and so many ancient Threads, it was not as simple as I had thought it would be. Ah, but now thatyouare here, Prince…”
She spun toward Merik, eyes wide and finger tapping at some page he could not see. Though he thought he should be able to. She was not so far away. He blinked. The room blurred.
“Now that you are here, Prince, I shall fill in all the gaps that this diary failed to explain. Magic is not what it was when Eridysi first ran her experiments. Your collar, my Loom—I have had to modify and adjust everything. But now that you are here…Ah,there is so much for us to explore. I wish I had not added the sleeping draught to your water! For then we could have started right away.”
Ah,Merik thought as cozy sleep charged in, pulling him to the ground in a clank of wood and chains.She drugged me. How nice.
ELEVEN
Never had Vivia seen a city so large.
Though tens of leagues away, Azmir consumed the horizon like wildfire across the plains. City of the Golden Spires, City of Eternal Flame. This city—and the enormous, expanding canyon around it—had as many absurd titles as its empress. And all of them, she had to admit, were deserved. From the striped canyon walls that ascended into the Kendura Hills to the whitecapped Sirmayans beyond, from the crowded wharves that clustered halfway across Lake Scarza to the Floating Palace on its red-earthed island at the center, Vivia had never seen or imagined any place like this.
As the six Windwitches carried Vivia ever closer to the imperial capital, the hard angles of its towers came into bright focus under the sun. It was ten times the size of Lovats—twenty times, even, and with a hundred smaller villages to dot the surrounding hills. Yet it was not the scale that stunned Vivia. Fresh, clean,standing,Azmir looked as if it had been built only a year before, even though she knew it to be centuries old.
As the Floating Palace rushed in closer, a white wonder of towers broken up by bursts of green, Vivia’s stomach snagged. She tried to blame her spinning vision and wobbling knees on the descent, but onceshe landed, she still felt like hurling. Like charging for the nearest cypress trees and hiding far from sight.
For there was nothing,nothingthat this lush, vibrant empire could possibly want from Vivia or Nubrevna. When it came to trade or treaties, Marstok had all of the advantages and none of the shames.
No regrets. Keep moving.She was here; she had power; she would not waste this trip.
Vivia smoothed at her silver coat before yanking off her goggles and attempting to tame her hair. It did not comply.
