Page 126 of Silvercloak

For the rest of the day, Saffron tried all the other wandmakers she could think of, but nobody could help. Feet aching from the miles upon miles she’d walked, she dejectedly made her way to her final destination: Artan’s Antiques. At the very least, she should secure an hourglass of her own.

Artan’s Antiques was a shop of unparalleled dust and chaos. All manner of old objects levitated at various heights, and it was incredibly difficult to navigate without almost being decapitated by a flying semi-globe. (Globes of Ascenfall were always half spheres, since the everstorms of the Carantic Ocean and the serpent-riddled Serantic Ocean lay between the pangea, the continent, and the other side of the world.)

As she perused, Saffron’s eye was drawn by several curious artifacts: a pair of rings engraved with some Ancient Sarthi she couldn’t translate, a neat silver set of what looked like enchanted butt plugs, and a blackwood ornament of a mourncrow with a peculiarly lifelike gleam to its eye. Tucked in the backmost corner, a pair of eerie human-shaped statues stood sentry. They were oddly blank, bearing only the faintest outline of recognizable features, and seemed to exist somewhere between solid andnot.If Saffron had to name their color or material, shealmost certainly couldn’t. They made her skin creep and prickle, so she tried not to meet their eyeless gaze.

Artan herself was a lithe, narrow-faced mage with long, flowing hair the color of straw. She was wrestling with a leather-bound grimoire, which gave her shock-bolts whenever she tried to touch it.

“Afternoon,” she said merrily, trapping the tome beneath her heeled boot. “How may I help you?”

“I’m looking for a small golden hourglass with pearls of ascenite inside.” Saffron was so exhausted that she didn’t bother to be oblique. “One that could fit in the palm of my hand.”

Artan nodded enthusiastically. “I know the type of artifact you seek. We have one or two in the attic—but they’re extremely old, so they cost a pretty penny.”

“How much?”

When Artan told her the amount, Saff had to stifle a gasp. It was far more than she had in her vault—and she had alotin her vault.

“Saints,” she said miserably. The whole day had been a bust. “I can’t afford that.”

As Artan ducked out of the way of a scrying mirror, the grimoire wriggled free of her foot, and she muttered a heretical curse that made Saff like her all the more. “We also offer part-barter, if you have anything of impressive age or value.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Oh!” Artan exclaimed, peering at Saffron’s chest. For a horrible moment, Saff thought her brand might have been on show. “What’s that pendant around your neck?”

“This?” Saff clasped her hand to the wooden oval. It was sky blue, reflecting an acquaintance. “It’s from my parents’ old enchanted front door.”

“Such unusual spellwork,” Artan replied, amber eyes twinkling. She was a pretty mage, with a purplish birthmark on her cheek in almost the exact shape of a griffin. “May I see?”

“It’s not for sale,” Saff said instantly, but she held it out for Artan to examine anyway.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. The magic … it’s Bellandrian in origin, I believe. From the Charlet region. An ancient order?” Sheshook her head, voice reverent, almost elegiac. “But no, surely not.” She blinked up at Saff. “This is fascinating. I’d accept it in lieu of the ascens for the golden hourglass.”

Oh, Saints.

Saffron’s head waged war with her heart. There was no way she’d ever be able to afford the hourglass with money alone, and she wouldn’t be able to timeweave without one. And timeweaving, for Saff, was fast becoming a matter of life or death. Of surviving in the Bloodmoons.

But the necklace was the last thing she had of her parents—hells, itwasher parents, what was left of their bodies and souls. To relinquish it now … she had already betrayed so much of her past, her childhood, her family. Yet this power had remained untapped in her for so long, and she couldn’t bear the thought of letting it lie dormant any longer. It was the only potential way to keep her loved ones safe.

And for her loved ones—for Mal and Merin, Nissa and Auria and even Tiernan—she would give anything.

“Alright,” she mumbled, her guts immediately writhing with regret as she unlooped the necklace over her head. She felt naked without it, as she had when they’d taken it from her in Duncarzus. Its absence felt physical, painful, like air against an open wound.

As she handed it over, she thought not just of her parents, but of Levan, and the concentration on his face as he brought it back to life. He’d done that for no obvious reason other than to make her the smallest bit happier. The memory felt like a bruise.

“A pleasure to barter with you,” Artan chirped, oblivious to Saff’s inner turmoil. “I’ll go and retrieve the hourglass from the attic.”

While Saffron waited, she rifled through the rest of the shop’s eclectic collection, searching for anything else that might help her survive the coming weeks. Her gaze landed on a curious palm-size object: black quartz, with over a hundred flat, symmetrical sides, each one engraved with an Eqoran rune. It was deathly silent and absolutely still, yet it thrummed with a kind of dark, virile energy.

“Oh, yes, a strange little artifact,” Artan said, returning from the attic with a maroon velvet pouch in her hand. “Asaqalamis.Painmaker. When held in the palm, it generates a stunning amount of pain without leaving a scar—very rare, only a handful in the knownworld. Eqoran Timeweavers used them in the darkest hours of the civil war.”

Saffron thought of the deep wound on her arm, carved with a crude shard of glass in the home of Nalazen Zares, and asked, “How much?”

Artan named her price, and Saffron paid it. There was a strong chance it wouldn’t work—magic never did, on her body—but she was willing to experiment.

“It must be activated in Eqoran.Az’alamis.Proceed with caution, friend.”

Saffron left the shop with both thesaqalamisand the miniature hourglass tucked in her cloak pocket, the velvet pouches warm against her palm.