Page 87 of Bloodwitch

That old crow had been right all along.

Safi marched into her garden, but before she hefted the telescope high, aclack-clack-clacksounded from the garden wall. Chills prickled down Safi’s arm as she swiveled her gaze up—and met two dark eyes.

“You aren’t just a bird, are you?”

Another clack that Safi suspected meant,No, I am not.

“Do you belong to… someone?” As Safi asked this question, she realized it was a stupid one. All of this was ludicrous, actually. She was talking to a thrice-damned crow and expecting him—believinghim—to answer.

A crow that saved your life by showing you a magic doorway.

And a crow that first suggested this very telescope to you, as well as Truthstones.

Nope. Safi was not going to talk to birds or entertain the possibility that they might be sentient. So even though its clattering laugh skipped after her, she lifted the telescope, returned to her room, and slammed the garden door behind her.

Then Safi worked. Piece by piece, she disassembled the telescope.Lenses, frames, mirrors, screws. While she turned and twisted and plied, she thought about Iseult. She thought about Habim, and she thought about the Hell-Bards, tortured and poisoned below. She thought about Vaness unmasked, and she thought about howwrongthe world had become.

She put all her thought, all her energy, all her being into that one sensation, that one piece of her magic’s power.False, false, false. Lies, lies, lies.She sank into the way untruths made her skin crawl and her ribs rumble. The way they pinched her spine and squished her organs.She thought of Cleaved. She thought of Red Sails. She thought of every rotten, wicked person she had ever met.

Three times, she heard the chimes clang. No one disturbed her, so onward Safi worked, following the intuition that had always guided her. And now that she followed the right path, it was as if her magic wanted this—it craved freedom as much as Safi did. It rushed out of her, filling glass and brass and screw.

Until, hours later, Safi finished.

It lay gleaming in the gauzy sunlight: a tiny spyglass assembled from the telescope’s eyepiece, several interior lenses, and bits of thread and quartz.

A Truth-lens.

Then Safi staggered to her bed, her mind and body a husk, and she slept.

THIRTY-SIX

The lines of the Cleaved did not lead Merik back to Esme’s tower. Instead, they looped him west, up a hill clotted with forest. If there had ever been buildings here, no signs remained now.

It was sunset by the time Merik finally crested the hill, legs aching and spine stiff from too much walking. Running, too, when his body could handle it. There’d been no time to waste, so he had not waited to watch the Northman go. He’d simply pointed again, repeating the wordsGo north. People help you.

Then Merik had grabbed his wet shirt and run until his legs had given out. It had not taken long. Merik was a broken man. The Puppeteer had seen to that. Yet even if his muscles and bones might fail him, his mind was as sharp as it had ever been. Discovering the Northman had energized him. A storm of questions and implications, with one lightning bolt shining brighter than the rest.

If that man had returned from cleaving, if he had broken free of Esme’s control—even if he didn’t know how—maybe Merik could heal too. And if Merik could heal, then so could Kullen. So could all of these people.

That thought sustained Merik throughout the journey back to Poznin. He ran when he could, shambled when he could not, and heveered wide when he saw the gap in Cleaved that marked the deadly singing pool.

As Merik passed the final sentry in Esme’s new path up the hill, the forest suddenly opened wide. Ruby light streamed down upon a long, rounded pond, the waters still and dark. Six oaks with barren trunks and branches reached toward the sky, like corpses breaking from their graves. Though clearly long dead, they had somehow never blown over in a storm.

Not somehow,Merik realized, the longer he stared. There were no man-made structures here. No flagstones to line the edges, no monuments to worship the magic. There was only thick grass, thicker forest, and the creatures of the night whispering from the shadows.

With that thought, a memory surfaced—a skipping song Aunt Evrane had once taught him as a child.

Oak and grass to honor the winds,

Limestone and cypress for water,

Beech and granite, gifts from the earth,

Cedar and sandstone for fire.

Birch trees and snowfall, the birthplace of Aether,

In shadowy foxfire, Void waits,