“Nommie filth,” the Hell-Bard spat.

And inwardly, she smiled, grateful he’d revealed his true values. It would make this next part so much easier. Or rather, it would make the nightmares so much easier. After all, she had already decided to finish these men; now she simply had a good reason.

The man whispered his blade free. He attacked, charging with sword arm high. Foolish. Easily dodged. Men always did underestimate her.

When he reached her, she swept sideways, planting her heel on the path’s inclined side. She launched up, a brief boost of speed and air. Then she twirled past him with staff extended.

It cracked the back of his head, right where spine met skull. Not hard enough to kill, nor hard enough to knock him out. Just enough to drop him to his knees and buy her the time she needed.

She wasn’t done with him yet.

As seven more soldiers charged toward her—none of them Hell-Bards, none as well trained—she grabbed the closest man’s Threads. Just a simple reach, a simple grasp. They were slippery and electric. Like river eels made of lightning.

She brought them to her mouth and chomped down in a single movement that had become as natural to her as swinging her staff. All she had to do was yank and bite. Yank and bite.

The man began to cleave.

He was not a witch, so no wild winds or vicious flames ripped loose. But he didn’t need such powers to cleave. Magic dwelled in everyone in the Witchlands, and now that same magic burned through him. He was a pot boiling over.

He screamed, a sound of such agony it stopped every soldier in their tracks. It did not stop her, though. Instead, she wound her fingers more deeply into his shredded Threads, even as it sent fire through her veins. “Kill them.”

So the man did, turning on two of his fellows—vicious, bloodied attacks with teeth and clawed hands—before a third man finally brought him down.

She was ready for that. Waiting for it. This was not her first fight, and it would not be her last. With a yank and a bite she cleaved a second man. Then a third, ignoring the raw power in their Threads that made her fingers shriek. Made power and pain judder into her soul.

The first time she’d done this—cleaved someone and held on—she’d fallen over. The second time, she’d been smart enough to lean against a tree. The third time, she’d had the staff.

Soon, her three Cleaved had burned to empty, blistered husks, framed by the tarry oil that their blood had become. Surrounding them were the brutalized bodies of their fellows.

Steam coiled in the air.

Slowly, her head still throbbing with power, but her fingers finally empty, she approached the only man left alive. He was pinned to the mud, his own gold-hilted blade stabbed deep into his stomach. It had been shoved there by one of her Cleaved.

He would die slowly from that wound, and contrary to what Hell-Bards wanted the world to believe, they were not truly dead men. There was still a final precipice from which they could never return.

She came to a stop before him and gazed down. She would take that blade once he was dead; it was too fine to leave behind.

“Nommie bitch,” he said.

“That’s not polite.” She knew what she must look like, towering over him with no expression and a teardrop scar beside her eye. She knew because she had seen that face in her dreams—in their dreams. They would not let her forget, no matter how fast she ran.

She knelt on the mud beside the Hell-Bard. Terror wefted through what remained of his Threads. He tried to pull back, but there was nowhere for him to go. He was a dead man in more ways than one. “How?” he rasped. “Did you…” He didn’t finish, but she knew what he meant.

“You know what I am,” she told him. “You just didn’t want to believe it.”

“Yes,” he said on a sigh.

“I did try to warn you.” She unsheathed a rusted cleaver at her hip.

“Yes,” he repeated, and this time resignation swept over his Threads. A beautiful rose red to match his blood. Which was good. There was no sense in fighting the inevitable. She knew that better than anyone.

“May Moon Mother light your path,” she told him in Nomatsi, pressing the blade against his throat. “And may Trickster never find you.” She sliced into his flesh.

Blood burbled. His Threads faded. She did not sit and watch—not as she had done before, back when she’d still cared about respecting the dead. Instead, she pushed to her feet and tossed her rusted, bloodied cleaver into the forest. It vanished into the wintry underbrush. Then with one foot on the Hell-Bard’s chest, she wrapped her fingers around his sword hilt and yanked the blade free.

A fine weapon, even with all that blood. She would clean it as soon as she had the chance.

She took the man’s sheath next, and after fastening it at her hip, she swept a final, disinterested glance around her. At the road, sunken like a frown into the mountain. At the eight corpses with steam clawing off their bodies. So much blood, so much Cleaved oil.

She had told herself at the last fight that she would find a cleaner way to do this. If not for her own eyes, then for whoever had to find the bodies. Perhaps at the next ambush she would finally succeed. Or at the ambush after that—because there would always be another. Just as eventually the Emperor’s army would catch up to her from behind, and she would kill, kill, kill.

Her stomach growled, an earthly reminder of why she had come here and why she had wanted to slay all these soldiers in the first place.

Even Puppeteers had to eat.

So after reclaiming her staff, she hauled herself off the muddy road, and Iseult det Midenzi entered the forest in search of food.

TWO

Safiya fon Hasstrel watched her hand, resting above the flames. It should have hurt. It should have burned and smoked and sent her howling.

Instead, she felt nothing. Wherever fire touched her palm, the flesh turned to shadows and the flames flickered through. She could see her skeleton, gray bones wrapped inside the darkness, disrupted only by a faint circle where a new Witchmark stained her skin.

“That’s enough, Empress.” An armored hand swatted Safi from the candle. “That’ll leave scars.”

“I know,” Safi replied. It was why she couldn’t stop doing it.

“Where are your attendants?”

“I sent them away.” Safi scrutinized the clot of pale crosshatching on her palm. It grew thicker each time she touched the Firewitched flame. Fascinating. Foul.

“Hell-pits, Safi, you can’t keep dismissing them.”

Safi. The Hell-Bard rarely forgot Safi’s new title. It was that misstep more than anything that sent Safi’s gaze to Lev. One of only three people she trusted in this entire wretched palace. This entire wretched land.

The sturdy woman was in full Hell-Bard regalia today, as she had been every day since her appointment as Safi’s private guard. Crimson and gold, the chain mail should have shone. The leather should have gleamed.

Instead, the uniform was dull. Drained of dimension and color like everything else in the world. The four-poster bed was no longer scarlet, the thick Hasstrel rugs were no longer blue, and the palace spires outside the wide windows—the city rooftops spreading on and on and on until the white-capped mountains beyond … the mountains Iseult had run to with Hell-Bards in pursuit …