Page 42 of Bloodwitch
“Are you here to pay your respects?” she asked. “Or report?”
“Report.” He withdrew the dead man’s opal from his pocket. “I do not know the monk’s name. I found him a day south of Tirla. An artisanal monk, caught in a battle.”
The woman sighed, a sound laden with regret, and plucked the opal from Aeduan’s palm. “It is the tier ten.” She frowned at the gem. “It is taking our lives one by one. A hundred of us have fallen trying to finish it.” Her gaze cut back to Aeduan’s. Piercing. Desperate, even. “No fortune is worth one’s life, Monk. Remember that.”
Then she bowed her head respectfully and melted once more into the shadows.
Aeduan returned to the common room. Curiosity propelled him. Curiosity and something harder—something almost like certainty, though he could not say how he knew.
It roiled in his gut. It made his strides slice long against the rain.
He had to shove through the monks clustered before the wall. Some snarled, some glared, just like the old days—and just like the old days, they all withdrew when they saw the blood swirling across Aeduan’s eyes.
Bloodwitch,they whispered.A demon from the Void.
Then Aeduan reached the lone paper staked to the planks. Such a simple beige sheet for such important words, and nailed above it were two more papers listing payments, as if the bounty had been increased not once but twice since first arriving.
SEVENTEEN
The early-evening sun bore down while Safi trailed the Empress of Marstok and Habim beside Lake Scarza. Naval ships groaned against their tethers and white sails floated for as far as the eye could see. Thousands of boats, yet still only a fraction of the full Marstoki forces. Most, Safi had learned, were moored on the southern coast or already at sea.
After Vivia Nihar’s departure, Safi and Vaness had traveled with Habim to the northernmost tip of the lake, where the navy kept their main headquarters. Safi had changed into an Adder uniform: black tunic, loose black pants, and supple black ankle boots. The only difference between Safi’s uniform and the other Adders’ was that the iron belt at her waist carried no weapons, and she did not have to wear the headscarf. Yet.
Rokesh and eleven other Adders moved around the group, spaced wide enough apart to allow Vaness to move unimpeded along the wide sandstone bulwark that overlooked the main docks.
“The Cartorrans want your Truthwitch,” Habim said matter-of-factly. Hands clasped behind his back, he examined sailors no differently than he had examined Safi and Iseult growing up. “Emperor Henrick grows bolder each day, Your Majesty. He taunts us, trying to see how close he can get before we attack.”
“And when they do get too close,” Vaness responded, no change in her iron stride, “then we will kill them.”
True, true, true.
“No,” Habim countered, “we will not.” He slowed to a stop, forcing Safi and the Adders to slow as well. “If we escalate the conflict, it will only give Cartorra—and Dalmotti—a reason to escalate as well. We are not ready for that, Your Majesty. We may be large, well organized, and well supplied, but that does not mean we will win.
“The bulk of your troops are Children of the Truce. They have no grasp of what war looks like, no understanding of what’s at stake, and little reason to care.”
Safi’s chest frizzed with the truth in that assertion—and it brought to mind a similar statement made on a similar evening only a month before.You have no idea what war is like,Uncle Eron had said.
And he had been right. Safi saw that now. She too was also a Child of the Truce.
As if on cue, an officer marched by on a lower parapet. He barked orders to a flag-bearer toting the standard. Ayoungflag-bearer, not old enough to yet have whiskers. Not old enough to have even grown into his feet.
Safi winced at the sight of him; Habim simply sniffed; Vaness showed no reaction at all.
Moments later, they resumed walking, so Safi resumed following. They now discussed ground forces and supply chains, river routes and highway checkpoints. All subjects Safi had been forced to study—under Habim’s tutelage, no less—but for which Iseult had always been the better student.
Safi had known Habim her entire life, yet the man she trod solemnly behind was not the man she’d grown up with.
There were similarities, of course. The impatience that always cropped his words or the stillness on his face when he was displeased—thatwas Habim through and through. But everything else was new to Safi, from the stiff green-coated uniform with gold tassels to the way everyone bowed low at him. Above all, it was the references hemade to places and past events that Safi had never heard of, but that resonated with trembling truth.
Was there any part of Safi’s life that had not been a lie? And how had she, the only Truthwitch on the entire continent, never once suspected?
At a warship with gleaming gold decks and scrabbling sailors in green, Habim and Vaness paused. In less time than it took Safi to wipe the sweat off her brow, two pages rushed in with a table and set it between Habim and the Empress. Then they scurried away while Habim removed a paper from his coat. After plunking two stones on either side to weigh it down, he motioned Vaness closer.
“This is a map of northwestern Marstok and the Sirmayan Mountains,” he explained. “Here you can see the main watchtowers. These three mountain passes must be better protected. A loss of any one of these towers will cut off supplies to Tirla. The city would fall within a week.”
Heat splintered in Safi’s shoulder blades. A warning of duplicity, and suddenly she was very alert and very keen to join this conversation. Neck craning, she tried to glimpse the lines and Xs Habim traced for the Empress. Yet all she saw was the map, exactly as described.
Except… the longer she stared, the more her vision seemed to blur. She scrubbed her eyes before squinting once more at the page.
