Honor among thieves

Chapter Forty-Seven

The air in Coruth’s house felt like it had been replaced with thick jelly. Cythera gasped in great breaths of the thick stuff and stared at the candles around her. The flames burned low and greenish, as if they burned not wax but strange vapors. She was too weak to ask why, too weak to do anything but hold her head up as she slumped in a straight-backed chair.

Directly before her she saw her mother’s face, framed by its wild iron-gray hair. Coruth’s eyes met hers exactly, stare for stare. Then the old witch nodded, just once.

“Good,” she said. “You did well.”

Cythera struggled to speak. Every muscle in her body felt heavy and weak. What she’d done… what they’d done together, made no sense to her. She had felt the power moving through the room, like a wind so subtle it could not even stir her hair, and yet so vast and world-engulfing she thought it might pitch all of Ness into the sea.

“Is… it… always…” she gasped. She couldn’t finish the thought.

She didn’t need to. “It will get easier,” Coruth told her. “You’ll learn to work with the natural currents and eddies of the ether, rather than fighting them. That is what a witch does. She works with what is already there. Do you understand?”

Cythera thought she might be starting to get it. And that terrified her.

“Was… it…?”

“Necessary?” Coruth asked. “You want to know why we thwarted your lover. It does seem strange, doesn’t it? I like the boy. I did not choose this to inconvenience him, girl. I am not that petty. Close your eyes.”

Cythera felt Coruth’s thumbs touch her closed eyelids, felt her mother’s fingers digging through her hair to her scalp. Coruth’s nails were ragged and they scratched her skin. “I’m going to give you a vision now, child. Just a little glimpse.”

What she saw then made Cythera scream for her mother to stop. War-bloodshed-bodies piled before city walls-fire lancing across battlefields-a sword-always the sword- the sword, Acidtongue, the one she’d enchanted just as dawn came up. The sword she’d touched with her own power. She saw the sword in a number of different hands, and knew she was seeing possible futures. She saw Skrae fall. She saw the barbarians driven back, cut to pieces as they screamed for mercy, and Skrae saved. She saw a war that never ended. All the images were superimposed one atop the other, yet she could make each one out distinct and so vivid it had to be real.

The hands that held the sword were all bloody, but Malden’s hand-she recognized it instantly-was only flecked with gore, where others were stained so red they could never be washed clean.

“Nothing is necessary,” Coruth said. “But some things are more devoutly to be wished for than others. The sword must stay with Malden. No matter what.”

“Even if-he doesn’t-want it?”

Coruth clucked her tongue. “This is the problem with being able to see the future. You see how little what people want matters. And you watch them make terrible choices, and do things you know they will regret. Malden will have no joy of that sword. But if he does not keep it, everyone will suffer.”

Cythera understood-though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Being a witch was about making hard choices. Or maybe it was about having no choices at all.

“Even if Malden keeps the sword, though…” she said, close to sobbing now. She was certain she would collapse soon, and fall into black, deep sleep. She lacked the energy for anything else, but she could not rest until she knew. “Even if he-keeps it. I saw-I saw multiple futures where he still held it. Which one will come to pass?”

“That’s not for me to say. It’s up to you.”

“Me?”

“There’s a reason I demanded you start your training now. Malden will have a role to play in the shape of destiny to come. Yours will be even larger-and darker.”

The look on Coruth’s face was almost sympathetic now. Cythera knew why, because she’d seen herself in those glimpses. She’d seen her own fate.

In some of those futures Malden put down the sword and took up a golden ring which he slipped on her finger. Those futures were already fading, receding as they became less and less probable.

In some-still bright and lucid, still distinctly possible-he turned away from her and they never saw each other again.

And in others just as real to her, he used Acidtongue to strike her down, to slay her, while tears rolled down his cheeks.