43. Crowned in the sea

Scarlet spiderwebbed across the fox-seer's palm, seeping from the dagger's hilt and forking up her wrist. Welts and blisters bubbled beneath the iron, her flesh cauterising before blood could simmer to its surface. The scent of charred meat singed the air, more rancid than the smell of Little Crestbury's butcher shop in the dead heat of summer.

But most terrible of all was her screaming. Each cry didn't leave space enough to echo, piercing through the cave and into its tunnels beyond, unending and unrelenting, without even a breath to break it. Despite her rotting finger no longer pointing at Ada, the young woman couldn't force her feet away, the wailing breaching her thoughts. Raeph, too, stood paralysed, but his face was shattered in an expression torn between horror and stomach-turning disgust.

The snake-seer howled in time with her sister, fingers clawing at her scaled jaw and eyes tightly shut. But she stayed by the cauldron, her panic overpowered by an eagerness for whatever was yet to come. Only the bird-seer remained calm, and when her sister's screams reached a shattering climax, her wrinkled hand shot out across the churning water and caught Ada's fingers within a cage of her own.

The old fae's broken nails barbed into Ada's hand with surprising strength, and her mind jolted back into her body as the seer wrenched her fist open. Candles quivered out as the fox-seer's screaming tapered, and she thrust the iron blade down into Ada's flesh.

Ada had been cut before. At the age of four, a healer in town had scored her arm for the cowpox vaccination, and she had wept for the five hours that followed. At twelve, her kitchen knife had missed its target, and she had scarred her finger with an angry ribbon that had softened over time. But nothing compared to how the seer now pressed the blade deep into her hand, iron slitting through skin as though it were silk. A matching slash ruptured Ada's vision, burnishing the world from a dull umber to a deathly crimson.

She cried out, tears welling up in her eyes as blood burst up from the gash. Her palm was split by a river of red, and its tides were fast and seething. Scarlet streams ran down her wrist and into the cauldron below, the first drop alone tinting its waters rosy. Ada heard the iron dagger thud to the earth, the fox-seer's screams dying with her own, both their throats left raw and ragged. She thought Raeph may have shouted something, but couldn't hear the word as the bird-seer ran a nail around her open flesh and a rushing filled her ears.

"You may ask your question, human," said the seer, her voice a whisper through the darkness now seeping into Ada's sight.

Her mind was quaking, thoughts refusing to flow together as she waded through her half-sunken consciousness. The words tumbled from her lips, small and fragile things. "Who is the Saltsworn?"

Satisfied, the bird-seer flung Ada's hand away. She stumbled back, velvet cloak sticking to the sweat sheeted across her arms. Raeph caught her before she could fall, his hands clamping around her waist as Ada's cheek met his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, each pulse matching the throbbing in her hand. It was a gentle noise, one that was at odds with his taut arms and rigid grip.

Behind them, the bird-seer brought her fingers, still stained with Ada's blood, up into the final slant of fallen sunlight. Her soaked skin shimmered as if she wore a glove fashioned from scarlet satin, and as the light was lost to dusky shadows, she plunged her hand into the boiling cauldron. Her sisters followed, the fox-seer hissing as her burnt palm hit the water. The three fae pooled their concoction within a mesh of fingers and then brought it to their lips.

They drank deeply, going back again and again, with quicker tongues and greedier hands each time. Their cheeks swelled and their necks fluttered with every mouthful, as though they hadn't drunk in years. Trails of bloody water ran down their lips and dribbled from their chins, drips and drops spotting the stalagmites carmine.

In the sickly silence, Ada's world swayed back into motion, her feet finding steady ground as she hauled her body from Raeph's. He made no move to stop her, even as her sight momentarily wavered, but she didn't miss the long fingers he left trailing along her sleeve. Ada turned her lidded eyes back to the cauldron and saw the three sisters with cupped and bloody hands. Her stomach lurched into her throat.

Only a scattering of candles were still glowing, the puddles of lard beneath their wicks tempting down their feeble flames. It left the cavern with little more than shifting shadows, the pale lights keeping to their corners, until there was a spark upon the ground. Ada stared into the darkness, soil sliding into stone, and then the flicker came again.

The iron dagger lay beneath the seers' feet, its hilt slicked in scarlet, but its blade a bite of silver. Ada's breath caught between her teeth, and she tilted up her chin to see if Raeph had also spotted the knife. But the man's black eyes were rooted forwards, staring at the seers as if he could not wrench his head away.

Their skin strained against each mouthful of blood, wrinkles stretching out like a drum hide pulled tight by invisible strings. But when they raised their hands to drink again, their flesh remained smooth and supple. Ada's heart faltered as she watched the seers' hair thicken, their limbs grow strong and svelte, and their lips blossom into crimson sneers. When the three fae finally straightened, they looked to be no more than ten years of age.

Ada could only gape as the fae arched their backs and rolled their necks, contorting this way and that as if loosening the muscles of their new bodies. They knotted slim fingers into their hair, sucked in their cheeks and tasted their teeth, too absorbed in themselves to spare notice elsewhere.

Raeph's voice was low and measured against the silence when he said, "Now give your answer to the question."

The fox-seer's eyes flickered up first, and there was no sweetness in her child's gaze. Any innocence had been long since stripped away, and her small body was nothing but a shell to hold the ancient mind within. Her painted lips were ones that laughed at time.

The snake-seer drew out her carving rock, her new fingers now scarcely able to wrap around its middle. "Shall I roll the bones, Sister?"

A wicked smile spread across the bird-seer's lips, blood blooming where once there had been ashen wrinkles. "No need, I have her answer."

The seer ran a hand along the rim of the cauldron, sketching the circle that her beaded eyes could not see. The mask had stayed tied around her head, but its feathers sagged around her small face, weighed down by years' worth of filth. She began, "Long ago, back when even the old fae were young, the world was ruled by nature. It grew everywhere and saw everything, but it could not speak.

"Charge was given to those who knew how to best wield its magic; to those who were gifted in agrestal casting and understood the balance of the worldly ways. Fae who believed themselves to be chosen made a pilgrimage to the sea, and there they walked into the waves until their heads were lost beneath the water. The ones that lived were washed ashore, and around their temples was a crown of crusted salt.

"They were known as Saltsworn, and given ward over the lands and the fae within. Their salted crowns fell away, but still, their power was proven as their magic thrived, even if they lived within homes laced with iron, or fought with swords forged from the metal." The bird-seer waved slender fingers in the air, their tips still tinted red. "But the title died along with the tongue it was born from, losing its prevalence as those deemed fit to rule by the fae kept drowning in the sea."

The seer laughed a laugh that was childlike in its pitch alone, but Ada had heard little past the mention of iron.

"The Lady of Wysthaven," she whispered.

"But what is the name?" Raeph pressed.

Even as he spoke, the sisters were losing interest, going back to admiring their fresh bodies in the dying candlelight. Black flames flashed within the bird-seer's beaded eyes.

"The question asked of me after the tithe was who they were, not what they are named." The wicked smile returned. "Our pact has been fulfilled."