Page 65

They’d gone through almost two dozen wands of all shapes, sizes, and woods, and each had the same effect. In the end, Joran had quietly said, meeker than Saffron had ever heard him, “I think we’ll take the first. The walnut.”

But Renzel had shaken his head fiercely, his wiry beard having somehow grown fuzzier and more unkempt as proceedings had worn on.

“My good sir, I’m afraid I cannot sell you a wand so clearly repulsed by the mage it would be beholden to.

No offense, dear,” he’d added, addressing Saffron for the first time.

Eventually, Joran had persuaded Renzel to sell a partly damaged old beech he’d stored in the back, having planned to mend it for over a year. Saffron had left the shop with a beat-up wand case, a sting in her wrist, and the feeling of being approximately one inch tall.

Twenty-one years later, Saffron finally realized the true reason none of the wands had felt right: she needed a weaverwick.

“Alexan Renzel,” said ?styrd now, several hundred miles away from that poky hole of a shop in Lunes. “A cantankerous fellow, if memory serves.”

“He didn’t want to sell me a wand at all,” Saffron admitted. “I think he thought I was a Ludder, but I made it through mage school just fine.”

“Well, let’s see if we can find you a more suitable instrument,” said ?styrd, laying down her old wand with a thinly veiled ugh . “Do you have an official specialization?”

“No, only Mage Practer.” There was no sense in lying. “But … I was wondering whether you might have any weaverwick wands hidden away?”

?styrd’s face darkened immediately. He folded his arms over his chest and narrowed his pale eyes. “Did you not see the official decree in the window?”

“I did, but—”

“Well then, you ought to understand that I could lose my freedom. Indulging your whims and curiosities hardly seems worth my life.”

“I know,” Saff said hurriedly, apologetically. “And I understand your hesitation. Do you know any wandmakers who might be more … rebellious?”

She tried for a conspiratorial wink, but his expression remained impenetrable.

“Even if I did,” he said coolly, “you’d still be hard-pressed to find what you’re looking for anywhere on the continent. Most weaverwick wands were destroyed in the Great Purge of 1024. Vallin, Eqora, Bellandry, and the Eastern Republics all complied with the International Council’s decree.”

“What about Mersina?” Saff asked hopefully. A small, anarchic island off the coast of Aredan.

“A law unto itself, as I’m sure you’re aware. Rascals and thieves and mercenaries, the lot of them. But not especially known for their dragon relations, and without dragons … no wicks, no weaving.”

Saff sighed inwardly. Some distant part of her knew this—had studied the period of history surrounding the Great Purge at university, even.

Back then, it hadn’t felt so personal, so critical to her survival, and so her memory had simply let it slip away.

But the realization came back to her now in full force: Lorissa Rezaran’s wand was likely one of the only weaverwicks left on the continent.

And the kingpin had rather a firm grip on it.

“But the dragons retreated to Nyr?th, did they not?” she pushed, hoping for something that might help her. “Surely a northern purveyor so esteemed as yourself would have access—”

“My lady, I have been rather explicit in my stance on this.” ?styrd’s tone was like the cool clink of metal on glass. “There are no weaverwick wands for sale here.”

Frustration threatening to boil over, Saff turned on her heel. “Alright. Sorry for the trouble.”

As she was leaving, however, ?styrd piped up in a curious sort of voice, “Although … my lady?”

She turned to face him questioningly.

“You might try Rezaran’s Runes, over on Tamoran Place.” He was once again shaving the other wand, gaze fixed on the project with a forced intensity. “They’re a strange lot—not strictly wandmakers, more like trinket collectors—but they’re fanatical about Timeweavers. They might have something.”

Hope fluttered in her chest like batwings. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“ Vaer kynn?s, ” he replied.

Her Nyr?thi wasn’t great, but Saff knew the expression roughly translated as “fare fine,” or more accurately: “good luck, you strange creature, because you’re going to need it.”

Tamoran Place was only a few streets over, but as she rounded the corner, the acrid smell of smoke was unmissable. Metallic, floral—magical fire, no less. She knew what she would find before she did.

There, in the center of the narrow, cobbled street, a building had burned to the ground. The townhouses on either side were immaculate and unscathed—the shop had been the clear and only target. Now the street looked as though it were missing a tooth.

Dread blackening her vision, Saffron crossed to where the shop once stood. On the ruined flagstones of the shop floor, a clear symbol was drawn in dark charcoal.

The Augurest eye, its iris a spiral.

Saints. This city was growing more divided by the day. From the fresh smell of the smoke, Saff suspected this arson was a recent act. She only hoped the mages inside had escaped with their lives.

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 and not.

If Saffron had to name their color or material, she almost 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 a lot in 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?” She shook 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, it was her 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.

“A saqalamis. Painmaker. When held in the palm, it generates a stunning amount of pain without leaving a scar—very rare, only a handful in the known world. 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 the saqalamis and the miniature hourglass tucked in her cloak pocket, the velvet pouches warm against her palm.

Forgive me, Mum and Dad, she thought.

Forgive me everything.