At the sight of it, dizziness washed over Iseult, so strong it almost stole her legs. But she was already moving, already lurching for what she prayed might be inside. She hit the table, dropped her staff, and hauled the iron toward her.

Stew. Within it was stew.

With shaking hands, she spooned cold, congealed liquid into her mouth. Stringy with unknown meat, it was the most delicious thing Iseult had ever tasted. She chewed, she swallowed, she slurped in more until it started coming back up again and she had to heave into a nearby bedroll.

Then she wiped her mouth and ate some more. Only when Owl’s pale Threads burned into her periphery did she finally stop.

Using her staff to steady herself, she gathered up the soiled bedroll and stumbled outside, where she found the girl just shuffling toward her from the forest’s pine shadows. A sleek white weasel scuttled nearby, her black-tipped tail flicking sideways.

Iseult sensed frustration in the weasel’s mind, but she offered no response. After all, it wasn’t Owl’s fault she was tired. The girl had walked for days up a mountain, and just like Iseult, Owl had lost everything and everyone that had mattered to her. First Blueberry had been left behind in the Sirmayans. Then she had lost her magic to the Hell-Bard’s heretic’s collar. And finally, she had lost all warmth and safety when she and Iseult had been forced to flee Praga two weeks ago.

It had been a night of hell-fires. A night of terror and desperation through a sprawling city where Nomatsis were hated and Hell-Bards hunted here. Iseult and Owl had barely escaped alive. If not for the weasel and the tools she’d given Iseult, they would still be back there. And they would probably be dead.

The heavy wooden collar at Owl’s neck clinked with each of her steps. The furs draped across her body—much too large—scraped over the ground. Iseult took Owl’s hand, too cold, and guided her toward the hut. “I will start a fire,” she said.

“Food?” Owl asked.

“I’ll get that too.” Then she added, “Fresh food,” because she had been selfish and finished the stew by herself.

Owl paused before the hut’s entrance, faded Threads tinted with mustard concern. “There is no one inside,” Iseult assured her, but Owl was focused sideways, on where the shaggy horses poked their heads around the hut’s side.

Before Iseult’s eyes, Owl’s Threads reached for them, straining and hopeful … until they hit an invisible wall an arm’s length away because the Hell-Bard’s heretic’s collar blocked her Earthwitchery. It was not so different from the golden chains the Emperor forced Hell-Bards to wear, except that those permanently cleaved away magic, severed away souls, and bound each Bard to the Emperor. The collar simply blocked a person’s magic from use.