Page 46 of Bloodwitch

It was the man from the faucet, his Threads now alight with horror.

“He drank too much,” Iseult said. Then she slammed the door and fell to her knees.

NINETEEN

Aeduan stared at the tier ten, unmoving. Unblinking. The room, the monks, their voices and their blood-scents—it all melted back into distant nothing. Elbows jostled, eyes glared, but Aeduan did not leave. He did not look away.

Ten thousand talers for his father’s head.

A king’s ransom indeed.

Two weeks ago, Aeduan would have taken the assignment without hesitation. He would have updated his father immediately via Voicewitch, and then he would have found a way to collect all that coin.

So, so much coin.

He would have had no qualms about faking the bounty. His father’s cause mattered more than the crude morality of the Monastery. Nor would Aeduan have cared if more monks died along the way, trying to win the coin for themselves.

Life was the price of justice, and Ragnor’s cause was a righteous one. The time to end imperial tyranny was now. Two weeks ago, Aeduan had believed that without question. No cracks in the stone, no weakness in his foundation. He was the son of Ragnor the Raider King, and his sole job was to raise coin for the cause.

Which was why he should take this tier ten. He should take it right now and then find a Voicewitch.

Instead, Aeduan turned away from the wall. The paper and its words smeared into nothing. He left the common room.

Rain beat down in the cloister, the storm having risen to full force. Clouds blocked out the sunset, darkening dusk to a false midnight. Aeduan walked along the covered edge, staring at leaves bent by raindrops.

He left the outpost, where his gaze skimmed with unseeing eyes over water splashing on the quay. Frothy with dirt, it pooled fast. He might have left the monks behind, he might be striding beside Lake Tirla while rain soaked him through, but he was not moving forward.

He was pulled in three directions. The inn was one way. His father was another, and the Monastery assignments another too, leaving Aeduan well and truly caught now. No different from the man with the lamb in the story—and also like that man, Aeduan knew he could not evade Lady Fate’s gaze forever.

She would find him; she would make him choose.

The people pulled Aeduan from his thoughts. They fled past, racing from the docks and sprinting for buildings beside the quay—and that was when he noticed the waves crashing up from the lake. Ships teetered and tottered, slamming against one another with wood-crunching force.

Rain slashed harder and harder with each passing second. The wind slashed harder too.

The animals, though, were what set Aeduan to running. Dogs, cats, and rats by the hundreds poured out of structures and flooded the street. They circled the lake, leaving the city. Had Aeduan been alone in Tirla, he would have followed. Had he been the Aeduan of two weeks ago, he would have abandoned the city and left it to the storm.

He was not that Aeduan, though. This Aeduan was caught between starvation and the slaughter. This Aeduan was not yet ready to choose.

Wind and rain howled loud as a nightmare. Street signs vanished behind the rain, building fronts faded into gusting darkness. Only his familiarity with the city kept him moving onward in the right direction.

And the Painstone. Without it, he would have been trapped at the outpost, possibly even unconscious by now. He certainly would nothave been able to face the hail. Small rocks that kicked off the cobblestones, spraying water and slamming into Aeduan’s legs, chest. They expanded the farther he jogged, soon growing as large as his fists. These shattered; explosive shards that smashed through awnings, carriages, and soon, if he wasn’t careful, would smash through his skull too.

Aeduan veered left. The crowded roofs above this street gave some respite from the hail. Short-lived, though, for the road soon ended and he was on another wide artery aiming uphill. He covered his head with the satchel of clothes and ran faster.

Then lightning shredded down. It wiped away Aeduan’s sight and blanked out his hearing—and the thundercrack that followed almost toppled him. It was only the beginning, though. Again, again, the lightning thrashed, and the city quaked beneath its power.

Aeduan hurtled forward.

At the periphery of his rain-streaked vision, he saw a corpse. Bloodied, flattened, felled by hailstone. Then a second, seared by lightning. There was nothing he could do for them; all he could do was keep moving.

He drew in his magic. Weaker than he would have hoped, butsomething. Enough to propel his limbs deeper into the storm. Left, right, no remaining sense of which streets he careened up, only knowing he aimed vaguely toward the inn.

Right as his feet splashed over fallen wind-flags, bright bursts of color amidst the shadows, a new sound hit his ears. Or perhaps it was not a sound so much as a tremble in his ribs, coming from the north.

He glanced back, squinting against the rain and hail. Then he ground to a halt. A cyclone, black and snaking, writhed across the lake. It moved impossibly fast toward Tirla.

In moments, it reached the ships, smashing through them as easily as a cleaver through bone. It was headed this way. It would reach Aeduan if he did not move.