Sightwitch Read online

  But of course, I was happy to see him tomorrow—not for me, but for Lisbet and Cora. Of course that was why.

  A skeptical “hmmm” was all Baile said before she departed.

  And a matching “hmmm” was all I could offer in reply.

  Y2787 D104

  MEMORIES

  Lisbet was Summoned today. So, so young.

  I am not surprised. She is special.

  After two spirit swifts erupted from the scrying pool and landed at Lisbet’s feet, she walked to me—not to Nadya—and rolling onto her tiptoes, she whispered, “You should still go.”

  Then she smiled so wide it hurt my chest to see.

  When she returns, her already changing eyes will be silver through and through.

  LATER

  Cora is ill. Her brow scalds to the touch, and she complains that her throat aches.

  “Just a winter cough,” Sister Leigh assures me. “I will keep her in the infirmary, and she will be fine in a few days’ time.”

  Please, Blessed Sirmaya, let that be so. Only nine months here, yet Cora and Lisbet have grown more dear to me than I could have ever predicted. “Thread-family,” Cora said to me only last week, and I had to lift my hand to hide the tears in my eyes.

  Y2787 D105

  DREAMS

  It is the day of the full moon.

  I could not sleep all night. Lisbet did not return to the Grove, and though it is not unusual for those with powerful Sight to meet with the Goddess for longer, it worries me all the same.

  Cora coughs and coughs. Leigh will not let me in to see her.

  Which leaves me alone in my workshop to watch silver time drip past.

  He will be at the Sorrow today. In three more hours, the girls’ father will arrive, but there will be no daughters to greet him.

  “You should still go,” Lisbet had said to me.

  So I will. ’Tis only polite, after all. Otherwise, he will worry and wonder and wait.

  Oh, whom do I fool?

  I will go to the Sorrow because despite Vergedi Knots and Arlenni Loops to fill my days, it is his face that fills my dreams.

  LATER — 5(I think?) hours left to find Tanzi

  Foxfire climbed the walls at all angles in this new space. It lent my dark skin a greenish sheen.

  The Rook had already fluttered off down the wide hallway. The man, meanwhile, wheezed beside me.

  “Thank … Noden,” he gasped. I spun toward him, knife slashing high.

  It was instinct. My blood still throbbed in my ears from the escape—and from the fall too.

  Only pure luck had kept me on the dull side of Lady Fate’s blade. How long until that luck ran out?

  The man doubled over, coughing and complaining that his lungs didn’t seem to work. I gripped the knife hilt ever tighter. I didn’t know who he was nor how he had entered the mountain. Fleeing the wyrms together did not suddenly make us allies.

  He glanced up at me, eyes watering. “You’re”—cough—“holding” —cough—“it wrong.” He waved weakly toward my knife.

  I couldn’t help it. I glared. “It’s still sharp, isn’t it?”

  “That angle … is easy to disarm.” Somehow, he looked even more awful than before. Like a cave salamander—one of the slimy ones that Tanzi and I always found in the subterranean streams.

  He straightened, wiping at his brow. It spread the black oil farther across his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He lifted his hands defensively. “I did just save your life, after all.”

  “I never asked you to.”

  “Oh.” He huffed a ragged laugh. “We can go back out there, then. Try it all again, except this time I won’t grab you when you fall to your death.”

  My glare deepened.

  “Hmmm.” His hands fell. “Clearly humor is not your thing.”

  I winced. It was too much like what Tanzi always said. Laugh, Ry! It’s funny, don’t you think?

  At the thought of Tanzi, I lowered the knife—though I didn’t sheathe it.

  Instantly, the man’s shoulders relaxed. He tried for a grin, though it was easily as terrifying as the one from before. Perhaps even more so, since now he looked like some skeleton-salamander hybrid.

  “Sorry again. For the, ah …” He wiggled his fingers. “The touching. Earlier.”

  I grunted. Then, with the briefest of eye contact, I said, “Thank you. For saving my life. Now walk.” I motioned in the direction the Rook had gone. It was the only way forward.

  The man, to his credit, did exactly that. He turned on his heel, that awful grin still stretched across his face, and marched forward, if a bit haggard in his movements.

  I counted twenty-three paces before the hallway ended and a workshop met our eyes, an expansive stone space with balconies and stairwells. Shelves lined the walls, while tables of all shapes and sizes filled the floor, each one littered with papers, books, and a hundred strange contraptions I didn’t recognize.

  Every available inch of wall was covered in foxfire. Even some of the shelves, leaving the whole room to glow green.

  “Noden’s breath,” the man murmured two paces away. His head tipped back to take it all in.

  I couldn’t help but do the same. Whatever this place was, it was special.

  The Rook squawked from a nearby table. The man and I jumped in unison, which set the Rook to chuckling.

  Which in turn set the man to laughing and me to scowling. My annoyance was short-lived, though, for right as the man twisted toward me, lips parted to speak, I spotted blood on his chest.

  “You’re hurt,” I said, and in a moment, without any thought at all, I’d sheathed the knife.

  “It’s an old wound,” he said, glancing down and patting at his stained coat. “I had it when I woke up on the ice … Oh, wait. This one’s new.” He barked a laugh, as if delighted by this discovery, and poked the wound. A great thump of his finger, like he didn’t quite believe the slash across his chest was real.

  His fingers hit the bloodied line.

  A cry of shock and pain split his lips.

  Then, before I could lunge forward or do anything at all, his eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled forward. So massive. A tree trunk tumbling over.

  He hit the floor with a room-shaking thunk.

  I darted over and crouched to one knee at his side. I tried to lift him, to turn him, to smack him awake.

  But he was out. Completely unconscious, his skin growing colder by the second.

  Now, I feel the need to assert here that under normal circumstances I would have helped him. Even as an Accidental Guest of the male variety, I would have stopped to help him had I not seen what I saw next.

  What happened was that I knelt beside him, and my hourglass slung down against my knee.

  The top half was empty. At some point, the last hour had run out.

  Nausea swept over me. I yanked the glass into view—only to face a crooked line of broken glass.

  I truly thought I might hurl.

  The hourglass was broken. The bottom half had shattered, and the device had drained of quicksilver entirely. Not a single drop was left.

  I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts sliced left and right, up and down, an incoherent jumble of questions and panic.

  I must have smashed it in the chase, was followed by, That was the crunch I felt against the ice wall. Then right on that thought’s tail, I have no idea how much time has passed. I have no idea how much time is left.

  I started cursing then. One swear word after the next, they fell from my tongue as I shoved back to my feet.

  I wish I could say I’d forgotten the man, but that wouldn’t be true. The fact is, I didn’t care about how hurt he might be or what healing he might need.

  All I could think about was time—that there was not enough of it, that I had to keep going. There had to be an exit from this workshop somewhere. There had to be a way to keep moving forward, no pauses. No looking back.

  As I stumbled away from the man, my gaze
sweeping over the crowded room around me, Tanzi’s face filled my mind.

  Her cheeks were bunched up, her eyes lit with mischief. “Laugh, Ry!” she taunted. “It’s funny, don’t you think?”

  Y2787 D105

  MEMORIES

  I met him on the bridge to the island, the spring forest at his back and the Sorrow at mine. His chestnut mountain horse, a sturdy beast, grazed near the shore while the morning birds chirruped and chittered in the trees.

  Like always, he wore a black silk tunic over a high-necked beige shirt.

  And like always, by the time I reached the Sorrow, he was already waiting for me on the bridge. I had come earlier today, hoping to beat him. Hoping to lay out a picnic of the morning’s first bread and some of Sister Xandra’s precious apricot preserves (I promised her a new cooling stone in exchange for them, though Sleeper knows when I’ll have the chance to build it). Yet still, he had arrived first.

  As I approached the bridge, I couldn’t stop gulping. Or blinking. And my heart knocked against my ribs with such force, I thought surely he could hear it. It did not help that a late spring frost had come last night, so my shallow breaths puffed on each exhale.

  Nor did it help that the sun had just risen over the mountains in the East, forcing me to squint to see him. I couldn’t gauge if he was happy at the sight of me, or perplexed, annoyed, elated, disappointed.

  And Goddess, why were my hands shaking?

  I reached him. He bowed in the mountain style: a bobbing of the knees and a hand to tap at his brow. “My lady.”

  I matched his movement, and then, because I have all the poise of an agitated four-year-old, I thrust out the canvas sack of food and exclaimed, “I brought you breakfast. The girls could not come today. Lisbet has been Summoned, which is the greatest honor and we are all so proud and you should be proud too. Cora is sick, but you need not worry. ’Tis a minor cough and Sister Leigh tells me it will pass in another day. I am so sorry that they are not here, but I hope you will enjoy the bread—”

  Oh, Goddess, what was I even saying?

  “—It was just baked, and the apricots in the preserves are from this year’s harvest. I hope you are not too upset about the girls not being here—”

  Stop talking! I shrieked inwardly. Stop talking, stop talking!

  “—I know they are sad to miss you, but there is always the next full moon. You will come then, won’t you?” I clamped my mouth shut. No more words, no more blathering.

  Especially since he was not smiling. The serious lines etched upon his brow had deepened, and his eyes—a rich brown with the light at his back—were hooded in confusion. Or irritation. Or perhaps even regret that he had come at all.

  “Oh,” he murmured eventually, reaching for the food.

  His fingers curled around the sack.

  Our hands met.

  It was the barest touch, his knuckles grazing against my grip. A grip that I wasn’t releasing for some inexplicable reason. Just as, for some inexplicable reason, I was staring at his hands.

  I had noticed his fingers before. It was hard not to, with such long, fine bones. With such calloused knuckles and small scars to pucker the skin. A soldier’s hands. A father’s hands.

  Never had they made my mouth go quite so dry, though.

  He cleared his throat.

  I reared back, flushing furiously, and squeaked, “I hope you enjoy the food. Safe travels home.” Then I spun on my heel and fled, all thoughts of sharing the picnic long since erased by panic.

  Fool, fool, fool—what had that been? Oh, Goddess, save me, what was I doing? Hands pressed to my boiling cheeks, I half ran, half skipped to get away from any more heapings of embarrassment. But when I reached the bridge’s end and tramped onto the Sorrow’s grass, a voice skated over me.

  “Stay.”

  I froze.

  “That is,” he went on, voice stilted, “I have come a long way. We could … share the food? Well, if you have not eaten, that is. And if you have nothing else to do, of course, since I am sure you are a busy woman. I would appreciate the company, though. Your company, I mean.”

  Now he was the one to ramble on, and as I swiveled toward him, a distant calm settled over me.

  He wanted me to stay. Without the girls

  And he was walking toward me, strong step by strong step. He moved like a soldier, yet his gaze was downcast and his free hand kept scrubbing at his dark hair.

  Hair, I noticed, that was damp. As if he’d cleaned up in the lake before my arrival.

  With that realization, all my fraught nerves slid away. In fact, a confidence began to brew in my veins. A sureness that what I felt—whatever it was—he felt too.

  He wanted me to stay. He wanted my company.

  So when he strode onto the isle beside me and our gazes met for the second time, I did not look away.

  Nor did he.

  His eyes were green now, with the light to course into them, and his lips were parted, his chest still.

  We stared and stared and stared.

  The breeze twirled around us. The birds sang. The horse munched.

  I cannot say how long we stayed that way. A man and a woman caught in a sunbeam. All I know is that eventually one of us moved and time resumed its forward beat.

  Gone was the awkwardness after that. I had no trouble speaking nor holding his eyes nor enjoying every laugh and sideways smile I earned.

  Hours we stayed together, until the sun overhead grew hot in its directness. Until I knew more about him than I’d ever dared ask before. How he was not amalej by choice, but that his tribe had been forcefully disbanded by the Exalted Ones. How the girls’ mother had passed away from a wasting disease. How he traveled far and wide, protecting the Rook King’s mountain people.

  Only when we had to go our separate ways—he to return home, and me to check on Cora—did any of our earlier tension return. Though even that was changed now, our clumsy good-byes fueled by reluctance instead of nerves.

  Or at least, so it was for me.

  Goddess, I do not know how I will wait twenty-eight days for his next visit.

  LATER

  I found this in my workshop last night. Lisbet clearly left it for me before her Summoning, but I don’t know what to make of it.

  Fissures in the ice

  always follow the grain.

  Unless something stops them,

  something blocks them,

  something forces them to change.

  Then the fissures in the ice

  will find new ways to travel.

  There are no coincidences.

  Except when there are.

  5(?) hours to find Tanzi

  On and on, Tanzi’s memory teased me. “Laugh, Ry!” she insisted while I searched the nearest floor for some kind of exit. “It’s funny, don’t you think?”

  Then, as I moved upstairs, her voice sang in time to my steps on the winding, creaking wood.

  Laugh. Ry. It’s. Fun. Ry. Don’t. You. Think.

  I hit the upstairs, a wooden loft that spanned into a larger floor of stone. More shelves, more tables, more books and papers and gadgets.

  Even the brief earthquake that shivered through the workshop, ending almost as quickly as it began, seemed to move in time to Tanzi’s mocking words.

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” I muttered. “It’s not at funny at all …” I trailed off, my eyes landing on another door with an eye-level keyhole.

  I set off for it, a fresh surge of strength in my step.

  This wasn’t funny, and I wouldn’t laugh. Instead, I would find Tanzi, I would find the Sisters, and I wouldn’t delay another moment—

  A storm of black kicked into my path. Feathers and must and a wild clacking of beak.

  The Rook was not happy.

  He pecked and squawked at me. He flew in my face, and no amount of swinging my hands or yelling at him made a difference.

  He simply would not let me go.

  When his beak chomped down on my nose, I f
inally gave up.

  “What?” I howled, reeling back two steps. “What is wrong?”

  I shouldn’t have spoken, because he launched himself at me. This time, I was smart enough to fling up my hands, but he simply bit my forearms instead. Hard enough to draw blood.

  I had no choice but to back away. Then finally turn and simply run.

  I thought he’d lost his mind. I thought he’d turned on me or been possessed by a ghost or something, and now he was going to kill me.

  So I scurried back the way I’d come, back downstairs, back toward the Nubrevnan.

  Upon reaching the unconscious man, the Rook abruptly stopped his attack. He landed on a table behind me, his wings stretched wide as if to block my way.

  Heart drumming in my chest, I sucked in air and gawped at him. “What,” I snapped, “was that for?”

  One of his wings dropped, as if …

  As if he pointed to the Nubrevnan.

  I glanced down. Blood had trickled out sideways around the man, following a gap in the stone tiles and framing his left side.

  That couldn’t be healthy. Nor could the way his back scarcely moved when he inhaled.

  “No,” I moaned. I didn’t have time for this. The Sisters needed me.

  My fist moved to my heart, and seconds skated past. I could heal a man I didn’t know and potentially lose my Sisters, or I could go after them and he could potentially die.

  Help the man. Help my Sisters.

  Except I realized the debate was pointless. When I had lost my pack, I had lost my healer kit too.

  “I’m sorry, the Rook,” I said at last. “I can’t do anything for him, and the Sisters need me. They need us.”

  The Rook did not look impressed, and my ire only fanned hotter.

  I puffed out my chest. “If I help him, I risk losing Tanzi. Is that what you want?”

  A purring of affirmation.

  “But I have no healer kit! There’s nothing I can do here!”

  He wafted his wings until a breeze wisped over me—and a page flipped off the nearest table.

  It landed at my feet, a torn-out sheet from some book on Threadwitches. Written in the margins were numbers with items scribbled beside them.