Neither Safi nor the empress ever spoke. Not that it mattered. The jungles of the Contested Lands made enough noise for them both.
For hours, they trekked southwest, away from the shore. Away from any Cartorran armada that might be hunting or any assassins still on the prowl. They crossed mud that sucked them to their knees. Mangrove roots and cypress knobs. Vines that snagged, thorns that cut, and insects that clicked and feasted.
Until at last, they needed a rest.
Vaness was the first to sit. It took Safi several dragging steps to even notice the sudden silence behind her. She snapped back her gaze. Empty jungle, and green, green shadows. Her heart lurched into her throat. Vaness had been right behind her.
There. Safi’s eyes caught on a hunched figure atop a fallen mangrove. The black of Vaness’s gown blended into the leaves and shadows.
Safi’s heart settled. “Are you hurt?”
“Hmmm,” was all the empress said before her dark head drooped forward, sweat-soaked hair cascading across her face.
Safi turned back. Water, water—that word pounded in her mind as she approached the empress. Vaness needed it, Safi needed it. They could go only so far without it.
Yet it wasn’t dehydration she found shuddering through Vaness’s small body. It was tears. The empress’s grief was so pure, it sang off her. Hot, charged waves that kissed true-true-true against Safi’s skin. She could almost see it—a funeral dirge to spread through the forest, rippling outward and growing perfect black roots.
She reached Vaness’s side, but no useful words rose in her throat. This … this was too big for her.
Iron was not meant to weep.
Vaness seemed to understand. Shackles clanking, she cupped her face. Rubbed and swiped and erased the tears before saying, “They were my family.” Her voice was thick. Almost lost in the jungle’s endless cry. “The Adders. The sailors. I have known them my entire life. They were my friends … my family.” A crack in her throat. A pause. “I did not think war would return so soon. The Truce only ended two weeks ago…” Her voice drifted off, leaving an unspoken truth to settle through the trees.
I ended the Truce by claiming you in Nubrevna. I brought this upon myself.
Then Vaness straightened, and like the iron she controlled, her posture steeled. When she met Safi’s eyes, there was no sign tears had ever come—and there was certainly no sign of regret. “I will kill the Cartorrans who did this, Domna.”
“How do you know it was Cartorra?” Yet even as Safi asked this, she knew the empire of her childhood—the empire that had sent an armada after her—was the only logical source of the attack.
Except … something was missing from that explanation. Like a key foisted into the wrong lock, the idea refused to click. After all, why would the emperor kill Safi? It seemed far more likely he would want his valuable Truthwitch kept alive.
Then again, perhaps he’d rather lose her forever than have her stand at his enemy’s side. And, the assassin had had blue eyes.
“Henrick.” Vaness spat the name, as if reading Safi’s mind. “His entire navy—I will find them. I will kill them.”
“I know.” Safi did know. The truth of that statement burned off Vaness. It heated Safi’s skin, boiled in Safi’s gut—and she would revel in Emperor Henrick’s downfall when it came. That toad-like leader of the Cartorran Empire, that sweaty-palmed man who’d tried to force Safi to marry him, tried to force her Truthwitchery into his clutches.
Safi offered her hand to the empress, and to her surprise, Vaness accepted. Her hands were surprisingly soft against Safi’s. Fingers that had rarely held weapons, skin that had never been worked.
Yet not once had Vaness complained today.
Iron might weep, but it did not break.
Scrapes and scratches Safi hadn’t noticed before now fought for attention. Now that she’d stopped, her aching feet had decided they would no longer be ignored. Especially her healing right foot. Yet she forced herself to say, “We need to keep going, Your Majesty. We’re still too close to shore.”
“I know … Domna.” Vaness uttered that title with a frown. “I cannot keep calling you that. Not once we are in Saldonica.”
“Safi, then. Call me Safi.”
Vaness nodded, mouthing Safi to herself as if she’d never used a first name before.
“But what shall I call you?” Safi asked, a spark of energy rushing through her at the prospect of a nickname. “Nessie? Van? V? Ssen … av?”
Vaness looked ill. She was clearly regretting this idea.
Safi, however, was only just getting started. Creating aliases had always been her favorite part of a heist, much to the annoyance of her mentor Mathew.
A bolt of fear hit Safi’s chest at the thought of him. At the thought of all the men and women working for Uncle Eron. They wouldn’t know where to find Safi now. Worse, they might think her dead and never come for her.
She swallowed, loosening her parched throat. Then she screwed her worries down deep, deep and out of reach. There was nothing to be done but hike onward.
And, of course, craft a new name for the empress. “Iron,” she suggested as they resumed their trek west, following the sun toward Saldonica. “Steel? Oh, Iron-y.” That made her chuckle.
Not Vaness, though, who now glared.
“Oh, I know!” Safi clapped her hands, delighted by her own genius. “I shall call you Un-empressed.”
“Please,” Vaness said coldly, “stop this immediately.”