WeaverWitch

Chapter 1- All Was Well

Aeduan sniffed the air, bloodred swirling in his eyes. He was traveling through a small town in the outskirts of Cartorra. After the battle at the Monastery, he had taken a sky ferry across the mountains with the help of a rebel Windwitch, and then used the impressive resources of the new Abbot Lizl to cut a quick path halfway across the Witchlands. Cartorra seemed as good a place to go as any, seeing as he had worked with the emperor on numerous occasions. The street bustled around him, filled with people from all over. From his vantage point around the corner of an alleyway, he saw a pair of Cartorran women, a pale Nomatsi man sewing in a shop, and a wealthy Dalmotti couple laughing at a street performer as they balanced stones upon their head. He also counted at least 20 armed soldiers around the fringes of the courtyard, scanning the crowd. Raiders.

Aeduan sighed, looking down at his bloodstained attire. Normally, he would just stroll out into the courtyard, ignoring the terrified and hateful stares that followed him as people scrambled out of his way, whispering accusations. Demon. Void-spawn. Bloodwitch. Monster. But now, his powers were drained from fighting Natan, the late Abbot of the Car Awen Monastery. He had managed to cleave Aeduan's heart in two before Lizl stabbed Natan in the back. Now the wound was healed, but dried blood encrusted Aeduan's white tunic to his chest and left long red streaks on his black uniform. His magic was so spent from healing that he could barely smell the blood of anyone in the courtyard beside his own firefly-laced scent.

He winced at the thought, a hand slipping under his baldric of knives to feel the small silver taler that hung over his heart. Iseult had dropped it in the snow, where he found it outside of the Monastery. Two bloodstains marked it, one fresher than the other. He remembered acutely the moment that Iseult had cut his palm, smearing his fresh blood on the silver coin so that he could find her wherever she went. Not for the first time, Aeduan wondered if even then she had been asking him to stay. If she had trusted him not to betray her as he later had in Tirla.

Shaking off the thought, Aeduan straightened his spine and released the coin. None of it would matter if Aeduan could not find her now. Not her hidden smiles that were nearly impossible to pick out unless you knew her well. Not her green-streaked golden eyes that looked like a wheat field with fresh shoots bursting through after a rain. Not her whispered words before she ran for her life into the tunnels of the Aether Well; Te Varuje. Te Varuje.

Not the brilliant red thread that stemmed from his chest and ended in hers.

He glanced around the corner one more time and then dodged into the small store where he had seen the Nomatsi man sewing. He kept his bloody chest mostly covered by the clean parts of his cloak, leaning over the counter to cover it with his arms and turning to a Cartorran woman sitting in the back of the shop. "Hello."

The woman was there in an instant. "Whaddya need?" She said rapid-fire, tilting her head and baring her teeth into what he thought might be a smile.

Aeduan slid a small bag of silver talers across the counter. "A shirt. Cloak. Baldric." He leaned closer. "And information."

The woman nodded, grabbing a tape measure and whipping it around back of Aeduan's shoulders before he could blink. Her eyes didn't linger at the partially exposed bloodstain as she whipped the length of rope back into her pocket, turning around to grab his supplies. "What kind of information? I have customer discretion, you know."

He grabbed the baldric waiting on the table, stuffing it in his pack and tapping his fingers on the underside of the table as he waited for his shirt and cloak. "What about non-customers?"

The woman shoved the cloak and shirt across the desk, her fingernails short and round. A worker's hands. "I like how you think. But I get the feeling that anybody you're looking for is in deep trouble, and I ain't no snitch."

Aeduan ground his teeth. He was used to shop owners happily selling out people for a couple of extra talers, but this woman was stubborn.

And she wasn't wrong- Iseult was in danger, if not from Aeduan. Not anymore.

Grabbing the cloak and wrapping it around his shoulders, covering the bloodstain, Aeduan took out ten talers and placed them on the counter. "Why would you think that?" He risked a glance at the Raider soldiers outside.

"Bloodwitch." She said flippantly, pushing his change across the table.

Aeduan started, and then lowered his voice. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"Naw. My mum was one. I always recognize them when I see them, even if they don't have huge bloodstains directly over their hearts."

Letting out a small sigh of relief, Aeduan fidgeted with the knives hidden under his torn uniform. "I am looking for a woman- Nomatsi. Likely dressed in black. Carries a cutlass." Beautiful, he stopped himself from saying. "She... is not in danger from me."

"Mmm?" The woman drawled, smiling mischievously. Her freckles stretched. "I see. Well, I get the feeling that you're telling the truth, based on the look you get in your eye when you talk about her. I learned of a small group of Cartorran and Nomatsi people that arrived at the Emperor's palace after being brought in by Hell-Bards to the Grieg estate. Two were rumored to be none other than Safiya fon Hasstrel, Henrik's betrothed, and Prince Leopold. One of the people whom Leopold insisted be honored as his guest was a woman who fits your description. Good luck with that, lovebird."

Aeduan pushed seven more talers towards her, and then walked to the changing rooms in the back, his face slightly red. This was the monk merchant in Tirla all over again. But that was beside the point- If Iseult was at the palace, the palace was where he would go.