Page 9

A S SAFF WAITED OUTSIDE HER CAPTAIN’S CHAMBERS, HER hand went to her necklace.

Hung on a delicate gold chain was a wooden oval pendant, made from a small corner of her parents’ once enchanted front door—still a faded teak, its magic stripped out by the force of the Bloodmoons’ opening spell.

Set into the wooden oval were two gleaming jewels, one emerald green and one purple sapphire.

The remains of her parents.

In Vallin, bodies were not dug into the cold, dark earth with their cloaks and wands, as they were in Bellandry and the Eastern Republics.

Nor were they turned to stone and ground into sand, as was the Eqoran custom, so that their souls might return to the desert.

The Vallish tradition—one that transcended religion—was to purify and heat ashes with raw magic until they compressed into glistening jewels, which were then set into all manner of jewelry.

It was said that whatever color of gemstone emerged reflected the true soul of the deceased.

The honor of who got to wear their dead was a hotly contested thing, the most crucial part of any will and testament.

Her Knight’s Scroll in Modern History had taught Saff just how many civil wars had broken out over who bore the diamonds of slain queens.

Jilted lov ers and bitter exes, siblings and sons and daughters, all of them clamoring for the crown that carried the jewels of the past.

But nobody had fought Saffron’s right to carry her parents with her.

The wooden pendant warmed beneath her grip, and it anchored her, brought breath back to her lungs.

Exhaustion pressed her eyes closed, despite the foreboding over what awaited her behind those chamber doors. As she teetered on the brink of sleep, she thought of her father, and of the day he taught her, at five years old, how to cast illusions.

“Listen to me, sweetling.” Joran had knelt on the rug before her, palms rested on her narrow shoulders, the heat of the ever-burning fire pressed against her apple-round cheeks.

“I know it stung you that old Renzel was reluctant to sell you a wand. But the fact you’re immune to magic is a good thing, alright?

No terrible curses will ever befall you.

You’ll never be rendered mute or immobile by magic, never be compelled to do anything against your will.

But you’re old enough now to understand that there are dark mages out there who may try to exploit your gift. ”

Fear had bucked in her chest; she was not yet hardened against it.

“Dark mages?”

Joran’s thumb had stroked the crook of her neck.

“There might be times in which you need to create the illusion that a spell or curse has landed true. That you have been turned to stone, or shrunk to palm-size, or … I don’t know, turned blue.

And I’m going to teach you how. But it’s challenging work, alright?

Illusionwork is some of the costliest magic you can produce, which is why it fell out of favor a long time ago.

And it’s also why nobody will suspect you of using it. ”

“But why can’t magic be cast on me?” Saffron had asked, for possibly the thousandth time since the wandmaker’s snubbing.

A cloud had passed over Joran’s face. “I’ll tell you one day, my love. But not today.”

They’d practiced mattermancy for several hours, and by the time Saff was able to conjure even a fine mist of an illusion, every bone in her body had ached with exhaustion.

Joran had kept her replenished with sticky date tarts and milky hot chocolate, jubilant choral music and delicate hand massages, but Saffron’s bucket had scraped the bot tom of her magical well long before an experienced mage’s would.

When she could cast no more, Joran had scooped her up in his broad, steady arms and carried her all the way to bed.

She’d rested her fire-warmed face against his chest, thinking that this was all very silly, indeed.

Why would she ever need to defend herself? She would always feel safe with her father by her side.

“Cadet Killoran.”

Saffron jolted upright. Had she been asleep? “Yes?”

Malcus had emerged from the captain’s chamber with a stony expression. “She’s ready for you.”

Letting her hand fall back to her side—the imprints of her parents etched onto her palm—Saff followed.

Captain Elodora Aspar was a renowned Wielder, and her chamber was a riot of the elements.

Because something could not be created from nothing, Aspar had to keep plentiful supply at hand should she need it.

Flames danced on the tips of silver candelabras, licking but never burning the floral arrangements climbing up the bookshelves.

Wind chimes tinkled by the open arched window.

A raised cauldron overflowed with earth and rocks, and a small water fountain shaped like a Serantic sea serpent burbled in the corner.

It was carved from ascenite—a shimmering, pearl-like material, also used in the royal mint to make coins.

Ascenite had a lightly amplifying effect on magic, and wealthier mages adorned themselves in jewelry made from it.

It was one of the only known substances that could not be magically enlarged, which made it the perfect currency.

And while there was no true poverty in Vallin—food was always in abundance, and housing could be internally expanded to provide endless shelter—ascenite still held its allure, thanks to the way it augmented natural magical ability.

And unlike pleasure or pain, ascenite never lost its potency. Once you had it, you were bolstered until it was taken from you. Little wonder the Bloodmoons pursued and hoarded it so doggedly.

Aspar was a statuesque mage in her late fifties, with shaven hair and spiraling Augur pupils tattooed onto her eyelids: a mark of her devoutness, a show of faith in the first prophets to guide her when she herself could not see.

Her silver cloak was pinned at the throat not with the usual sapphire but with a crystal-cut diamond—a mark of her tenure and seniority.

Combined with the pale cream of her wrinkled skin and the ridged bones of her exposed skull, the palette was spectral, almost ghostly.

“Cadet Killoran.” Her voice was smooth as seaglass. “Please, take a seat.”

Saff’s pulse drummed in her temples as she lowered herself into a stiffly upholstered chair.

Aspar aimed her wand—a narrow, neat mahogany—at the small coffee press on her desk. “ Et limus .”

The golden top plunged through the dark, rich liquid.

Aspar uttered another spell and the cafetière poured the nutty, caramel-scented coffee into a wide-rimmed goblet, which floated over to Saffron’s open palm on a gentle breeze, dribbling a little onto the mosaic-tiled floor.

All of this could easily have been accomplished by hand, of course, but most mages were afflicted with an occupational laziness when it came to doing things the Ludder way.

“Tell me, Killoran.” Aspar leaned back in her chair—a huge throne-like thing with navy cushioning. She stroked the purple-eyed velvine purring in her lap, the dozens of silver rings on her fingers clinking together. “Do you honor the Five Augurs?”

Saff frowned, confused by the conversational direction. A beat too late, she noticed a weather-worn copy of the Divine Augurtures cracked open on Aspar’s desk. A doctrine over which countless battles had been fought.

“No,” said Saffron cautiously. “I was raised a Patron.”

Unlike most northerners, her parents had taught her that a court of Saints had come together to make the world of Ascenfall—and all its forms of magic. As an Enchanter, Saffron’s own Patron was Naenari, though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d engaged in any sort of worship.

“We were never all that devout,” she added, in the name of honesty.

“That is not what I asked. The beliefs of the Patrons are not fundamentally incompatible with Augurest worship. One can believe that a court of Saints made the world, while also believing that the Augurs foretold the future. Foretold the truth. ”

The beliefs were not inherently incompatible, no, but most mages fell into one of the two camps.

There were atheists, of course, and several fringe religions—such as Draecism, whose followers were subservient to dragons, and the Disciples of Halantry, who worshipped the eccentric necromancer Halant—but the Patrons and the Augurests made up most of the population.

There were plentiful reasons the sects rarely overlapped.

One was that the Patrons still honored Aevari, the patron saint of timeweaving, as a founding member of the court, which made them abhorrent in the eyes of most Augurests.

Another was that the Patrons’ Six Laws of Virtue expressly forbade genocide, which was not entirely unreasonable, while the Augurests had murdered Timeweavers in the thousands.

The other reasons were more granular and largely not worth getting into, other than to say tension between Patrons and Augurests had historically oscillated between moderate and world-ending.

And Aspar knew this perfectly well. So why was she needling at a cadet with opposing beliefs?

“Are you asking whether I believe in the foundational prophecies?” Saffron asked measuredly. “I believe they were cast, yes.”

A hard stare. “Just not in their teachings. Not in their truth .”

Saffron had to tread very carefully.

The five foundational prophecies had been cast a thousand years ago, when the Foreseer class of magic was far more common—and more celebrated.

In the first prophecy, the Augur Amuilly foretold that a new magical class, the Timeweavers, would rise with a terrifying power in their blood.

The people and the Crown would delight in the promise of what this gift represented.

A chance to undo fatal mistakes that led to war and tragedy, a chance to remake the world in line with their own whims and desires.

This had come to pass.