WeaverWitch

Chapter 11- Torn

Iseult stared at her hands, her slender fingers weaving their way around a leftover strip of bandage. They stretched it and knotted it, worked it into patterns. It was almost automatic. Her fingers had a mind of their own as they navigated the worn gray fabric and twisted it into complicated shapes as though it was their purpose. The hands of a puppeteer as they guided their little characters through a story that was bound to end in tragedy.

She remembered a play she saw once, in Venaza City. Contrary to the usual covering over the top of the stage, it had been open, letting the audience see the mad running back and forth of the puppeteer as the characters danced through a happy song. She had been just about to leave the crowded courtyard, bored, when gasps began to echo around her. She turned her head, looking back at the stage, where instead of happily dancing figures there were now bubbling masses of tar. It seeped out of the puppet heads, eyes, mouths, spilling over the stage like a morbid waterfall as the puppeteer gathered all their strings in one hand. Then, holding the gaze of the audience, they took out a pair of shears and snipped the pale threads, the pieces floating down to the stage. The sad, tar-covered wooden toys fell in a heap, their weeping eyes as deeply black as the void.

Immediately, there were yells. Complaints. A child crying as the father glared at the robed figure on the platform. But Iseult was smiling, and as she stared up at the stage, she realized that the mysterious puppeteer was also looking at her. They raised a hand, and for barely a second, Iseult could see a flash of pale skin. Nomatsi skin.

Then they faded into the shadows, and Iseult was left wondering who had been so bold as to, for an instant, show the haughty Cartorran families milling about what was waiting just beyond the walls of their golden sanctuary, built on the bones of Iseult's people. Now Iseult understood. She only wondered who the strange puppeteer had lost.

Iseult threw away the torn strip of cloth, a growl bubbling at the back of her throat. He wished she could do the same to the people of the emperor's court- reach for their threads, twist them, cleave them until their magic turned rotten and oozed through their bodies like tar, dripping out of their eyes and boiling through their skin.

Stasis. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, Iseult abruptly stood up from where she was sitting, hunched over, on the edge of her bed. She had been given a new room after the stabbing at her threadsister's insistence, as Safi was convinced that there were still people in the castle who had it in for her.

But he'll protect you, a voice in the back of her head insisted. Aeduan cares for you.

Then why did he leave? She retorted, pacing.

He came back. The voice whispered.

Iseult went stiff at that. She remembered attacking a man in the hall... dragging him into her room... And seeing Aeudan's face. It had been a dream, she was certain. She told him that she would meet him at the party.

The party. Safi didn't want her to go. And she shouldn't. There were too many people that wanted her dead, out of the palace. They couldn't even look at her out of disgust that she was being honored as a guest, a dirty Nomatsi being treated like a princess.

It was her mind playing tricks on her. It had to be.

Aeduan was halfway across the Witchlands, almost certainly dead. And Iseult abandoned him. It didn't matter that they saved each other at the Origin Well. 

It didn't matter that there was a brilliant red thread stemming from her heart and ending in his.

A low, frustrated yell sprung from Iseult's throat, and her fists came down on her dresser. It shuddered violently, causing a bit of water to spill onto the floor from the basin resing on the side. It slowly dripped down the side of the solid brown oak, leaving dark trails like tears on the smooth surface.

I need to get out of this rutting palace.

She grabbed the first thing she saw draped on her bed- a pair of white pants and a loose shirt. If Safi knew she was going out like this, she would throw a fit. She pulled them on, yanking out the ornate barrette tucked into her black hair for good measure.

With a determined pace, Iseult pushed through her door and set off down the lavishly decorated hallway. She had no idea where she was going or why, only led by a desperate need to leave this room, this place, this damned empire-

As she rounded the corner, a Cartorran woman with thick blonde hair, wearing an intricate blue ball gown, stepped in front of her and leveled a pretentious glare at Iseult. Her voice was high and reedy.

"Where are servant's manners these days? Bow. And my room needs cleaning. Down the hall to the left."

Iseult's hands tightened into fists on either side of her, flexing and itching to smash into the woman's perfect freckled face.

Stasis in your finge-

"I said, bow!" The woman hit Iseult's shoulder lightly with the palm of her hand, her face twisting into a sneer. The still-healing stab wound underneath burned with pain, spots flying in her eyes.

Iseult snapped.

Roughly pushing the woman away, Iseult's voice rose to a feral, growling roar. "I am nobody's servant, you ignorant hag. Don't you dare touch me!"

Her stomach burned and her head pounded with scarlet rage as Iseult bared her teeth and snarled at the open-mouthed, stuttering woman before taking off at a blind sprint down the hall.