Page 120 of Witchshadow

Kahina stood at the heart, watching Stix through half-lidded eyes, herpipe clutched between her teeth. No tobacco burned, no smoke puffed. Her hair was looser than usual, the tight curls free around her face, and her skin shimmering with sweat as if she too had just been running.

Though she was fifty paces away, Stix’s spectacles sharpened her, revealing a furious edge Stix had never seen before. This was not the Admiral who controlled the Ring. This was a Paladin thwarted.

“Where is Ryber?” Stix panted, stalking nearer. Mud squelched beneath her feet.

“Where are the blade and glass?” The jade around Kahina’s thumb flashed.

“I don’t know.”

“Wrong answer.”

The pain began.

Once, as a girl, Stix had been swimming on the beach when fire had suddenly wrapped around her arm. It had moved down her torso and onto her leg, a spiraling line that had quickly flamed throughout her body from a jellyfish tentacle tangled across her skin. The jellyfish itself was gone, but the danger of its tentacle had lived on. A tiny, autonomous weapon that had needed no master to ensure pain.

The blister on Stix’s thumb was the same. A fire so sudden, so pronged, Stix didn’t react at first. Even when it spread across her body, too fast for her mind to follow, she was locked in place by shock.

Until suddenly, exactly as had happened on that day paddling through the waves, she was screaming and clawing and crumpling in on herself. And this was worse—so, so much worse—for no amount of wriggling or scratching could remove it.

She fell to the earth, vision blurring beneath pain. She thought she was screaming, but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was agony.

When at last the magic flames receded, Stix found herself supine across the mud with Kahina gazing down. “My pet and I went all the way to that damnable mountain, Water Brawler, and all the way into that room of which you spoke, so imagine my consternation when there was no broken blade nor broken glass upon a pedestal. There were only the ghosts from our past, still whispering of treachery. A new treachery.Yourtreachery.

“Now I will give you a second try to do this properly: where are the blade and glass?”

“No,” Stix rasped.

Kahina’s face twitched at that word—a movement Stix would never have detected without her spectacles. As it was though, she saw the creasing around Kahina’s eyes. Awkward lines that she didn’t use often because she was not a woman used to disappointment.

The expression departed as quickly as it had come, and with it came a false calm. A loosening in her limbs as she emptied her pipe onto the mud.Tap-tap-tap. Ash floated down near Stix’s head. “I had hoped we would not come to this, Water Brawler. I had also hoped you would be the one I thought you were, but…” A brittle smile. “I should have realized the truth of you. Baile would never forget the tide comes at midnight. Bring her out!”

It took Stix a moment to realize Kahina didn’t shout her final words at Stix. That they were instead directed toward the wooden stall, to where a figure with broad shoulders now formed in the shadows.

The Hammer emerged a moment later, and stumbling behind him, her mouth and hands gagged by stone, was Ryber.

Stix instantly grabbed for her waters, even as Ryber shook her head. Even as Stix felt Kahina touch the jade ring and fresh flames awaken in her muscles, her veins, her soul. But then flames ignited around Ryber—real flames from a Firewitch—and she vanished in an instant. The entire wooden stall did.

Stix screamed,Douse!, with her throat and her mind, but her magic couldn’t answer. Not while Kahina’s pain stabbed though her.

“Enough.” Kahina’s voice bent into Stix’s ear, crackling like a fire’s heartbeat. “I have your friend, Water Brawler, leaving you only one choice: tell me where the blade and glass are.” At this command, the pain in Stix’s body receded enough for her to see Kahina’s eyes, blazing with reflected flame.

And enough for her to frantically scour her mind for some other lie. Some other trick of words to fool Kahina and her blighted ring. Perhaps if she said the tools were somewhere in Saldonica. Or that she didn’t know precisely where they were. Or maybe if she said they’d been broken…

Stix never got to speak. Not before the Hammer lifted his arms, revealing a shattered blade and a shattered glass. “The girl was carrying them with her. They were right beside you all along.”

Somewhere in the flames that imprisoned Ryber, Stix thought she heard a muffled scream, thought she felt a wordless apology vibrate through what little water still remained in the arena. Which was wrong, all wrong. None of this was Ryber’s fault. It was Stix’s and Stix’s all alone.

Now Kahina had the tools that would destroy her. The tools Eridysi had made so Paladins like Kahina would never rule the land, while Paladins like Stix would always remain to protect it.

Kahina had the blade and glass. Kahina had won.

FORTY

The night was cold, the wind sharp. But the woolen cloaks Leopold had chosen for himself and Safi were thick, and Zander at Safi’s back blocked the brunt of the wind’s bite.

The only words exchanged in the past two hours had come from Leopold. “How do you feel?” he would ask. “Fine,” Safi would answer, hoping no lines snaked up her neck or across her face. Leopold always accepted her answer, though, and the Hell-Bards never noticed anything.

A good sign, so long as she continued to feel herself—and she did, even with the frost snapping at her organs. Digging into her bones. So long as she kept moving closer to Iseult, closer to Uncle, she could ignore this strain.