Page 64

T IERNAN—SWEET, UNASSUMING, SLIGHTLY USELESS TIERNAN —was working for the Bloodmoons.

Once the initial shock had worn off, Saffron supposed that it made sense. He was weak-willed, which made him easy to turn, and his father was a significant figure in the King’s Cabinet, which made the whole family ripe for extortion.

How long had this been going on? It could be a legacy rot, stemming from his father and passed down to Tiernan like an awful family heirloom. But from the way Levan had phrased it in his journal, it seemed like Kesven Flane hadn’t been used to his full potential yet.

The most likely explanation was that while Saffron was inside the Jaded Saint talking to Nissa that first Laving night, Levan had approached Tiernan outside.

Threatened him into cooperating. It would explain why Tiernan had apologized to Saffron the following week, having learned just how easy it is to fall from grace, just how fragile the house of cards holding up his life truly was.

His corruption was a stunning blow to the undercover operation, and also to Saffron as a person, but she was simply too tired to think her way around it now. Once she’d delivered the salve to Levan, Saffron finally fell into her bed, exhaustion pulling her under.

When she woke the next morning, the first thing she smelled was the chaos of the raid—smoke and saltwater, blood and sweat and pain.

Wrapping herself in a silk robe, she padded along to the bath chambers and ran a steaming pool filled with rosehip oil.

There, she let the warm water coax the fraught knots from her body, resting her head back against the edge of the pool.

On the ledge next to her, Rasso snored on his back, every leg cocked in the air.

She couldn’t quite remember why she’d ever found him frightening—the shredded Whitewing throat was like something from a distant dream.

In any case, she wouldn’t leave the bath chamber until she had formulated a plan for how to deal with Tiernan. Her mission could not succeed while he was still informing for the Bloodmoons.

She should go straight to Aspar, of course, although she hadn’t spoken to her commanding officer since the raid.

The captain would be at Esmoldan’s Baths that evening, but it seemed far too great a risk when she’d only just convinced Lyrian of her innocence.

Besides, telling Aspar would mean Tiernan lost everything.

His career, his freedom—he’d certainly be thrown in Duncarzus—but also perhaps his life.

Would the Bloodmoons kill him to protect their secrets?

She couldn’t turn Tiernan in, nor could she emerge triumphant with him still in place. Which meant the only real option was a third hideous thing: somehow incapacitate him until her undercover work was over.

A series of horrible ideas came to her. She could use effigias or debilitan and stash him somewhere discreet, like a shipping container, but it would be just Tiernan’s luck to end up on a trader boat to Royane or Daejin, where nobody would ever find him again.

She could bring him to one of the empty Bloodmoon cells, but then he’d be in the belly of the beast, vulnerable to assassination at any given moment.

Perhaps she could confront him herself, convince him to run and hide of his own accord.

She could confess her own involvement in the Bloodmoons—if Auria, who’d spotted her on the raided boat, hadn’t already told him—and try to understand just how tightly the scarlet tendrils wrapped around Kesven Flane’s son.

Finally, the plan solidified. She would go back to the Jaded Saint on Laving night, and if any of the Bloodmoons questioned her, she could say she was meeting her own informant.

Tiernan had been there the last two Lavings in a row, and chances were he’d be there again, duty-bound to meet Levan outside.

That was two days away, so Sording would be spent trying to buy a weaverwick wand of her own—in her plain black cloak, of course. Nobody in their right mind would sell a wand that powerful to a Bloodmoon.

THE FIRST WANDMAKER SAFFRON visited had an illustrious boutique on a small plaza, fronted by a forest-green awning with ? STYRD’S W ANDS emblazoned in gold cursive letters.

She was particularly hopeful for ?styrd because he was Nyr?thi, hailing from the northern tundra nation at the very top of the known world.

When the dragons fled the Dreadreign, tired of doing House Rezaran’s bidding, they sought refuge in Nyr?th.

Dragons were said to be the original Timeweavers, and weaverwicks—which came from a curious strand inside their claws—had to be willingly gifted to a mage in order for the power to transfer.

They’d become so wary of the Sarthi continent nations that the Nyr?thi were likely the only peoples they trusted with the wicks.

If anyone would have a weaverwick for sale, it would be ?styrd.

When Saff spotted the Crown decree in the wandmaker’s window, however, her hopes sank like stones.

Following King Quintan Arollan’s 14th Amendment to the Public Safety Act of 1074PV, the sale of weaverwicks is prohibited by Vallish wandmakers. Those found in breach are punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Saffron sighed and stepped inside anyway.

The shop was bright and airy, swirling with dust motes, scented with sawdust and wood polish.

The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with small, locked glass cases, inside which were an astonishing array of wands with neatly written labels.

In the center of the room was a large freestanding cabinet with a plaque that read D ISPLAY O NLY .

Inside were some of the most handsome wands Saff had ever seen, with solid gold handles and jewel-studded tips, the hues of wood so unusual and rare that they must be worth a small fortune.

“Morning,” Saff said cheerily, approaching the counter at the back of the shop. “I’m looking for a new wand. Mine is becoming increasingly unreliable.” She laid her knobbly abomination on the counter. “If I scorch one more set of my grandmother’s curtains, I might be assassinated.”

?styrd sat on a high-backed velvet stool, his feet kicked up on the counter as he shaved a new wand into shape using a strange silver contraption.

The toes of his shoes were sharply pointed, in the Nyr?thi fashion, and he had shoulder-length hair the color of ash.

Like most native Nyr?thi, his eyes were narrow and slanted—an ancient evolution that provided protection from the harsh white glare of snow and ice.

The irises were so pale they reminded Saff of Rasso, whom she’d reluctantly left behind so as not to draw undue attention to herself.

“Enchanted to help, my lady.” ?styrd’s words had the staccato accent of the tundral north. Running a forefinger down the clumsy length of her own beech wand, he hissed like a cat. “May I ask which wandmaker sold you this … this ?”

“Alexan Renzel, from Lunes.”

All at once, the scene came back to her.

Renzel’s Wandery was a small, pokey shop tucked in the village of her childhood.

Wonky stone walls, dusty rugs, and a single goldencandle that Renzel claimed had burned for centuries.

On her sixth birthday, just a month before she started mage school, her parents had taken Saffron to Renzel’s for her official Pairing—the momentous day upon which a wand is bonded to a mage.

First, Renzel—a bony, wrinkled fellow with milk-white skin and a gray beard down to his knees—had lowered his hooded hazel eyes and closed a narrow ascenite cuff around Saffron’s trembling wrist.

“Sharp scratch,” he had said, his vowels full of grit, and tapped the cuff with his own wand—a handsome ebony thing, as long as his forearm.

A small needle had emerged from the inside of the cuff and pierced Saffron’s skin, pressing all the way into one of her blue-green wrist veins.

She’d fought back a gasp as her blood slowly filled the cuff, turning it from a pearly white to a bright poppy red.

It had felt like rather more than a sharp scratch, but Saffron hadn’t wanted to give the grim-faced wandmaker the satisfaction of seeing her squirm.

“The magical abilities are weak, at this age,” Renzel had said to her parents. He had a habit of speaking over Saffron’s head, which rankled her. “We need the ascenite to meet with the blood and amplify whatever lies within. Only then can we pair a wand accordingly.”

Renzel had plucked a short, squat walnut from his cabinet first. He ran a gnarled finger down its length. “As good a place as any to start. Best suited to confident, steady Enchanters.”

Saffron had smiled warmly at her dad, who was himself an Enchanter. Perhaps she’d be like him, charming her way through the world.

But Joran had a strange, semi-strangled expression on his face, glancing sideways at Mellora, who was positively ashen.

In hindsight, they’d likely known this was going to be a fraught experience, thanks to Saffron’s magical immunity.

But she hadn’t known that then—practicing illusionwork with her father was still months away.

All she’d known was that the forced smiles on her parents’ faces made her belly squirm.

As soon as the walnut wand had touched Saffron’s palm, there was an uncomfortable lurching sensation in her hand and wrist as the wand recoiled from her—and vice versa. Disappointment had tumbled into her stomach as Renzel grabbed the wand away, but it was still early. She’d find another.

“Perhaps willow, for the humble Healer.” Renzel had gazed earnestly through his hooded lids at Mellora, who was visibly pissed off at the word humble.

He’d set the sleek, silvery willow wand into Saffron’s palm, but the same thing happened. Lurch, recoil. A lick of pain where the needle still penetrated her skin. A strange, expectant energy emanating from her parents.