She paddled and flailed and fought to escape the water, but it was not the water she needed to fight. It was Aeduan. He was dragging her upward, scraping her back on rock, and soon he had her stretched across the stone. She sputtered, sucked in air, and tried to rise.

But it was no use. Aeduan now held her bloodied sword at her throat. “Stop.”

Iseult wanted to weep at the sound of his voice. Once so familiar, now utterly unknown. Wanted to weep at the way her neck shrieked with pain and her whole body was cold, cold, cold. Most of all, though, she wanted to weep because she had failed. She had been captured by a man who was not Aeduan, while Owl and the weasel waited unsuspecting at camp.

The weasel, she thought. She could send her a message, and maybe the weasel could make Owl understand they had to flee.

Iseult’s dream was short-lived. Shattered as quickly as it had formed, for as she lay there with Aeduan’s boot digging into her breasts, a voice split over the river’s churn: “I have the girl!”

Iseult squinted through wet lashes to where another Carawen monk hunched over a tiny figure, bound and gagged upon the shore.

Iseult had been too late, too slow, too foolish. Evrane had captured Owl, and there was nothing, nothing Iseult could do. She had failed one more person. She had cleft one more life in two.

This time, Iseult did not fight her tears.

Twelve Days After the Earth Well Healed

They are in the imperial Tailorwitches’ room, Iseult, Safi, and Lev, surrounded by cloth and thread and scissors and needles and more light than any other room in the palace—natural and Firewitched. The three have ejected the witches and tailors who had only just been there. Their Threads drift impatiently in the hallway outside.

Safi glares at herself in a looking glass. “The hips are too loose.” She picks at the Hasstrel blue rippling below her waist. The complex gold pattern stitched into the bodice—geometric suns and moons—must have taken days to embroider.

Lev twirls her noose lazily nearby, leaning against a table covered in bolts of silk imported from Dalmotti. For once, the Hell-Bard is not in full armor but in a new dress uniform.

And Iseult is dressed in new clothes too. The gown is far finer than anything she has ever worn before—and more ostentatious. She cannot blend into the shadows with silk the color of sea-foam, and she cannot hide weapons beneath gauzy skirts. She does like the pattern, though, matching Safi’s but in silver instead of gold.

The Emperor has given Iseult and Safi every item they could desire. More than everything. They are lavished upon, the Cahr Awen.