“This one injured me in Dalmotti.” She furled her left fingers into a fist. “And this one I pulled from you at dawn. I think they’re cursed. No,” she amended, head shaking, “I know they are. Owl called it ‘bad earth.’”

Bad earth. He glanced down at his chest, at the six old scars that marked his flesh and the four new puckers on his belly—puckers that should not be there at all, just as the seventeen holes in his back should not be there either. He’d had more than enough time to heal.

“Corlant,” Iseult continued, “can do that. He…” She tapped at her right biceps. “He almost killed me with a cursed arrow in Dalmotti.” There was a strain to her voice now, like a fiddle pulled too tight. “I was unconscious for a long time. I-I almost died.”

“That cannot happen to me. I am a Bloodwitch.”

She shrugged as if to say How can you be so sure? Aloud, though, she said: “Why was he with this tribe? The Midenzis are on the other side of the Jadansi. Unless…” She trailed off, a tiny frown wrinkling her brow.

Aeduan offered no reply. Lying did not come naturally to him, and he had already pushed his limits. Silence seemed his best option now.

For a long moment, Iseult gazed at him, unblinking. As inscrutable as all Threadwitches were trained to be. Behind her, the fire popped, and a final burst of flame guttered upward. Smoke gathered. A soft breeze pitched across Aeduan’s bare skin.

He wanted his shirt back.

“We need a proper healer,” Iseult said at last, giving a pointed glance to Aeduan’s stomach. “We need better healing supplies, too, and we’re out of lanolin for our blades.”

We, Aeduan thought, and before he could argue—before he could ask Why we? or even Why did you wait the whole night instead of leaving?—Iseult was on her feet and circling behind him. Trails from the movement streaked across his vision. Smoke and flesh and flame.

“You’re bleeding again,” she murmured. Then her fingers were on him once more, warm and sure while she pressed the damp cloth to his back. He hadn’t even seen her pick it up.

“No.” He reached around to take the cloth from her hand. “I can do it,” he tried to say, but the twisting in his ribs, the stretching of the wounds down his back, set his lungs to spasming once more.

This time, the coughing would not abate. Even after two cups of water, he could not suck in enough air. So when Iseult tried a second time to dab away the blood that never stopped falling, he did not protest.

Nor did he protest when she said, “We should go to Tirla, Aeduan. I know it is a Marstoki stronghold, but we can find a healer in a city that size. And we can get fresh supplies too.”

We, we, we.

The damp cloth felt like razors against his skin. Everything hurt in ways that it should not, and his shredded throat would soon bleed if he did not stop this coughing. He was weak; he hated it. Carawen monks were meant to be prepared for anything, and Aeduan had always prided himself on being doubly so. Yet over the last two weeks, he’d been ill-equipped and constantly unsteady.

It didn’t help that Aeduan had never worked for free before. It was a nagging pressure along the back of his neck. Like words tickling: You should be getting paid. Each moment that passes is another coin lost. It was also another moment in which he had not contacted his father or pursued the coins owed to him.

Two weeks ago, Aeduan would have followed the scent of clear lakes and frozen winters—the ghost who had stolen his coins and aided Prince Leopold in Nubrevna. Two weeks ago, he would have also returned to Lejna and claimed those coins from where Iseult said they were hidden. And two weeks ago, he would have looked at each passing massacre and felt nothing. After all, death was inevitable in wartime, and as his father always said: Life is the price of justice.

But two weeks ago, he had not found Owl, bound and drugged by raiders claiming his father’s banner. Two weeks ago, he had not encountered dead Nomatsi tribes and recognized the scents of his father’s men amidst the slaughter.

And two weeks ago, he had not been traveling with a woman to whom he owed more life-debts than he could keep track of, and with more life-debts stacking between them each day.

Like right now. She tended him, and Aeduan did not know why—nor did he know how to tally such ministrations. He simply knew he was indebted. He simply knew he could not leave until he had paid her back.

And there was still the problem of Owl’s missing tribe. Of the scent like summer heather and impossible choices, still alive. Still somewhere in the mountains ahead.

“Yes,” Aeduan agreed at last, a ragged sound between coughs. “Let us go to Tirla.”

* * *

It had been raining on the day Aeduan learned his father still lived. Aeduan had gone to a Monastery outpost in Tirla for his next Carawen assignment. So many had requested him specifically in those days, and this time was no different. One mission, however, had caught his attention above the rest.

He could remember the words exactly.

Bloodwitch monk needed to find a hound named Boots

Meet at farmstead north of Tirla, blue wind-flags above the gate

Aeduan’s childhood dog had been named Boots. He had killed that dog; maybe he could save this one.

Except that when he reached the dilapidated farmstead, there was only a man waiting to see him in a small house with a thatched roof.

Aeduan drew a knife before entering. He did not sheathe it for many hours, even though the man seated on the stool beside the hearth was an unmistakable reflection of Aeduan—except for the lines around hazel eyes and a gray fringe that brightened his hair.

“It is you,” the man had said in a gravelly voice that hummed deep in Aeduan’s chest. A voice that still told the story of the monster and the honey in Aeduan’s dreams.

Aeduan did not put away his knife. He did not react at all, even as the man rose. Even as he said, “Aeduan, my son.”

Ghosts, after all, did not return from the dead.

“You’re alive.” The man spoke Nomatsi, a language Aeduan had not used in over a decade. “I … thought you were dead.”

Aeduan had thought the same. He said nothing, though, and neither man sat. Both men stared.

“Your mother,” the man began, a question in his tone.

But Aeduan shook his head. A single hard snap. Dysi had not survived. Aeduan would not say so aloud.

A pained inhale from the man, before he gave a curt, almost businesslike nod. “Twice I have loved,” he said. “Twice empires have taken everything from me.” Then he swallowed. He frowned, and for the first time in many, many years, Aeduan recalled that yes, his father had had another family. Daughters and a wife that had died.

“So you must see,” the man continued, “why having my son returned to me … It is more than I ever dared hope.” He spoke so simply, as if commenting on the weather. As if describing how best to evade an enemy’s blow.

Such flat tones for such desperate words, yet somehow, this made their meaning cut deeper, and for the first time since entering the thatched-roof house, Aeduan spoke.

“Tell me where you have been.”

His father complied.

Aeduan learned that in the fifteen years since the attack on their tribe, Ragnor had moved to Arithuania, following Nomatsis on the run and witches cast out by their empires. He learned his father had built an army meant to end imperial tyranny once and for all.

And he learned that his father had a place for him at his side, if Aeduan was willing to take it.

Aeduan was.

In the end, the blood-scent had convinced him that this man was indeed his father. It had changed in fifteen years, though—the bloodied iron and sleeping ice might still remain, but gone were the nighttime songs and the loving hounds that he remembered. Now there was fire. Now there was inconsolable loss. It stained every piece of Ragnor’s blood. It gave his eyes a weight that no one else could understand.

No one but Aeduan, who had been there on the day everything had been taken away from them.

In the end, it was Ragnor’s words that had convinced Aeduan to actually join him. And since that day in the thatched-roof house, his course had been so clear. Aeduan had never second-guessed. He had never hesitated. Coin and the cause. Coin and the cause. No space for personal wants, and no desire for them either. He had given up hope so very long ago. There was only action, only moving forward. Coin and the cause. Coin and the cause.

Until two weeks ago.

Now everything was muddied. Now Aeduan felt trapped between duty and life-debts. Between his father and a child. He could not fully serve Ragnor while also searching for Owl’s tribe. He could not find Owl a home—or repay Iseult what he owed—while also remaining committed to coin and the cause.

He was caught, like the man from the tale who wanted to feed his family during a blizzard, but could not bear to kill the lamb. In the end, everyone died of starvation, including the lamb.

For Lady Fate makes all men choose eventually. Even Bloodwitches.

EIGHT