Page 58

THE NEXT THING SAFFRON knew, they were on their knees in the warded tunnels. It felt a little like regaining consciousness after fainting: a gap in awareness, a distinct disorientation, a sickening swoop in the stomach and the vision.

The other three Bloodmoons, all now conscious, were hacking up their lungs, sucking in deep lungfuls of unpoisoned air. Saffron couldn’t even bring herself to pretend. She could barely see, hear, think.

They must know she had betrayed them.

She wouldn’t be killed. The prophecy showed as much.

But the same could not be said for Mal and Merin.

A frightened animal clambered up her throat, the fear writhing and alive. She clung to Rasso, who was panting by her side. The tears over Nissa’s almost-death were already drying on her face, leaving behind a salted crust.

Perhaps if she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, she could stay suspended in this liminal moment. Perhaps she could—

“What in all the hells just happened?” snarled Lyrian, the vitriol in his voice caustic and pure.

Castian lay flat on her back, red-rimmed eyes pressed shut. “We were raided,” she hissed in dizzy disbelief. “Segal’s still there. How did the cloaks know about the shipment?”

Levan sat up gingerly, leaning his back against the cold stone wall.

His body did not tremble or shake, the way most mage’s would after expending so much raw power.

“You said something didn’t feel right, so I reached out to my rat in the Silvercloaks.

They confirmed a squad was moving against us.

I got to the lox just in time. Stashed it up near Novarin. ”

Saff reeled from the cascade of revelations. First, that Levan was powerful enough to portari all the way to Novarin, which was hundreds of miles away.

But that was hardly the most pressing concern.

He had a rat in the Silvercloaks.

Did he mean the Grand Arbiter? Would Dematus have been privy to the plans for the raid? Surely Aspar wouldn’t have told Dematus what they were doing ahead of time, knowing the Grand Arbiter was dirty. Unless Dematus herself had tendrils snaking into the ranks of Silvercloaks …

Detective Fevilan, a powerful Enchanter with a drink problem, had been disciplined earlier in the year for accidentally leaving a Bloodmoon case file in a tavern after a shift. Perhaps it was no accident, after all.

Another thought needled at Saffron, but she was afraid to look at it head-on.

Was there a darker reason Nissa was so willing to help Saffron? To find Nalezen Zares, to steal the tracing charm?

A darker reason Levan was willing to haul her from the brink of death?

A darker reason he’d so quickly executed her to begin with—to cover his tracks?

“I need to be able to portari, ” Lyrian snarled at his son. “Laws be damned.”

“I’ve explained it to you a thousand times,” Levan replied, jaw gritted. “If you didn’t insist on using the weaverwick wand, I could have one with portari imported from Bellandry.”

“Mare-shit.” Lyrian clambered to his feet, woozy and stumbling, and jabbed his crooked finger down at Levan.

“You knew there was a raid, and you let me get on that boat. Did you want to see me killed? Is that it? Are you so desperate to be kingpin that you’d see me slain?

Give me one good reason I shouldn’t execute you right—”

“The docks were crawling with Silvercloaks,” Levan said, his tone disaffected, but he couldn’t hide the sheen of sweat at this temples. He raked a hand through his dark waves, mussing them into twirled tufts. “If they heard me warn you, they’d know they had a rat in their midst.”

Lyrian swung a loose fist at his son, and Levan caught it blandly in his palm.

Combat training, indeed.

“How was I to know you’d start killing people left and right?” Levan dropped the fist. “If you’d just let them search the hold, let them find nothing, they’d have been forced to get off our backs. They wouldn’t have been able to search us again for at least a year, per customs law.”

“You—”

“They can arrest you now.” Levan stared coldly at his father.

“Whenever they want. I don’t know if they will, because they likely want to stick an organized crime charge, not petty murder.

But you can no longer leave the bounds of the wards.

They won’t be able to breach them without a warrant from Dematus, and I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. ”

Saffron waited with bated breath for the inevitable next part.

“All of this is incidental,” Lyrian hissed, swinging on his heel.

“Because the real question is how the hells they knew we were expecting lox tonight. And I’m not buying the routine search shit, because there were dozens of Filthcloaks waiting in the wings.

That wasn’t a routine search. That was a planned takedown.

” He glared at Saffron like she was a pail of animal filth. “I smell a rat.”

“You branded me with your own two hands,” Saffron retorted, although she felt a stomach-swoop of nerves as she invoked the brand once more.

If there was any time the kingpin might abandon his belief in the spellwork, it was now.

And yet what else could she do or say? “If I had anything to do with this, I’d have been struck dead on those docks. ”

Lyrian sank to his haunches. Spittle gathered at the corners of his thin, cruel mouth. As he had on that first night, he jabbed the tip of his wand in the hollow beneath her chin, forcing her face upward in a way that made it difficult to swallow.

“Listen to me, Filthcloak. If this was you—and believe me, we will learn the truth—I’ll slaughter everything and everyone you’ve ever held dear.

” He stood unevenly, but there was nothing weak in his vicious glare.

“Levan, find Segal. Aviruna, take Killoran to the cells. Rough her up a little. Then she and I can have a little talk.”