Chapter 8 Toran
Toran
“You can’t devour drinks so now you devour books?”
Toran looked up from the page he’d been reading to find Quint watching him. He should have known it wouldn’t take Quint long to find him.
Toran sat at a desk in a castle bedroom that didn’t belong to him. Actually, the bedroom didn’t belong to anyone. It was a guest room made up to please Orlonea’s visitors. But to him, the room would always belong to Loriana.
Loriana Kodigno, daughter of one of the most prominent families on the Kono Islands, had been an important guest for all of Orlonea. She’d come to Gadore as an emissary, seeking to establish trade relations between the two countries. Or so he’d thought.
For decades, the leaders of the Kono Islands had refused contact with the continental countries, instead choosing to remain self-sufficient and isolated.
And then Loriana had shown up on their docks.
Calculating, stubborn, and full of pride.
A trade agreement might have been drawn up and signed, a new relationship established, had Loriana not gotten on that ship back to the islands.
He blamed the Witch. Loriana shouldn’t have been hunting her. If it weren’t for the Witch, the love of his life would still be alive.
The sight of Loriana’s face in the square today—real or not—had shaken something loose inside him.
She would have hated who he’d become. Hated how he drank away his pain. Hated how he neglected his duties. Hated how far he’d fallen. And, most of all, she would have hated how he did it all because of her.
Funny, how some things came full circle. Because he was fairly certain Loriana had hated him the first time they met.
It had all been accidental. He, running from the harried librarian after taking a book without permission, and she, a girl with dark hair cropped close to her round face, just trying to find a quiet place to read.
They had stumbled into the same hiding spot—he tripping over her legs and landing sprawled across her lap.
She hadn’t laughed or chuckled as he had.
She’d glared and shoved him hard enough to bruise his head when he hit it against the back of a bookcase.
But he couldn’t blame her for being rude to him.
Nor could he blame himself for the shameless flirting he’d done after they’d detangled their limbs.
They both had forgotten the books they were reading that day.
“They say books are infinitely more satisfying,” Toran said, folding the cover over his hand so he didn’t lose his page. “Like mead for the mind.”
Quint stood tall inside the door, the top of his neatly trimmed hair skimming the frame. His friend had always been built like a ship—large and capable of ramming—but Quint’s sheer size was never as apparent as when he stood in a doorway.
“And what do you say?” Quint asked. Under his joking tone, his words rang deep with concern.
Toran flung open the book in front of him, riffling through the pages. “Did you know someone was arrested last year for stealing a single grain of rice?”
“Why steal a single grain?” Quint asked. “Why not a bag? What do you do with one piece of rice?”
Toran grinned. “I’m so glad you asked, my friend.” He read the words hastily scrawled in the page’s margin. “This girl stole the grain of rice to use it to pierce the trader’s eyeball.”
Quint blanched. “With a grain of rice?”
“With a single grain of uncooked rice.”
“The Ditch?”
“The Ditch.”
Quint eyed the stack of books on the floor beside Toran.
A different stack of books had sat in that same spot when Loriana occupied the room.
Older books with worn pages and frayed spines.
Toran had credited those books for why Loriana had always smelled a little like dust to him.
Dust in her fingertips, sea salt in her hair, and honey on her breath.
“Is this how you plan to spend your time? Laughing at the absurdity of the Ditch?” Quint asked.
“Oh, wait. You want absurd?” Toran reached for another book in the pile. “Then I have to tell you about this other arrest. Would you believe—”
“Toran.”
He froze, leaning half out of the chair, his hand around the spine of a book. “Quint?”
“What are you doing?”
“Reading. Or I was until you interrupted me.”
Quint shook his head. “No, I mean, what are you doing in here?”
Quint’s dark eyes flitted over the walls of Loriana’s former bedchambers, skipping the dusty furniture, the newly spotless fireplace, and landing on Toran at the desk.
He shifted in his seat. “No, you mean what am I doing here instead of discussing strategy with the King or doing something—anything—related to this holy mission he’s given me.”
Quint crossed his arms. “You want to tell me why you’ve holed up in here?” He eyed Toran dubiously. “You didn’t stash any liquor in this room, did you?”
“No.”
Though Toran wished he had. He wished his self-proclaimed smarter, drunk self had thought further ahead than the next immediate drink. The truth was this room brought him comfort, unlike the way his other memories of Loriana wrecked him.
Quint stared for a long moment. “Then what are you looking for?”
“You,” Toran said automatically, turning back to the desk. “I’m always looking for you, Quint.”
It was something he used to say all the time. Back when people had floated in and out of his life like jettison on the sea, Quint the one person who never left his side. Once, Toran had turned to find Quint nowhere in sight. A panic had filled his veins.
Turning up later, his friend had asked, “What are you looking for?”
Toran had been so relieved to see him again, he’d said, “You.”
“Toran.” Quint sighed. There was a sad weight to the sound, a resignation he knew well. “I’m sorry I didn’t do something sooner. You weren’t you and I just turned my back. I should have helped you.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Toran let the words flow through his mind, tucking them away for another time.
He reached for a book in the stack—all of them prison records—and picked the one dated from the months leading up to Loriana’s death.
Flipping through the pages, he turned back to Quint.
“Care to place a wager on how many times Kile Pinyak’s name turns up in here? ”
Quint frowned but conceded the change in topic. “I thought you didn’t make bets.”
“I said wager, not bet.”
“They mean the same thing.”
“Fine.” He shut the book with a snap. “Then guess for me. How many, you think?”
“Knowing Pinyak? Nine?”
“Thirty-nine.”
“Thirty-nine?”
“That’s right.”
Quint narrowed his eyes. “So you already knew the answer and yet you wanted me to place a wager against you?”
He shrugged. “Educating myself on the odds.”
“You sure you didn’t stash liquor in here?”
“No, you bastard.”
Quint grinned. “Takes one to know one,” he said, striding into the room at last. He leaned against the far bedpost, knocking his knuckles against the wood. The sound was low and muted, the wood deep and full inside. “So, thirty-nine?”
“The guy’s addicted.”
“To magic?”
Toran nodded. “It’s the only explanation. Why else would a man willingly consume magic—even diluted—knowing it’ll make roses sprout from his hands?” He slapped a palm to the page. “What man wants instant piles of flowers?”
“A florist?”
Toran snorted. “A florist Pinyak is not.”
“The prison guards call him Thornyak,” Quint said, “because he’s a constant thorn in their side.”
“Have the prison guards mentioned anyone else? A girl by the name of Invy Grastol?”
Quint frowned. “You’re supposed to be looking for the Witch. Not a girl with light brown hair, blue eyes, and hundreds of freckles on her face.”
“How—?”
“I heard you ask the guards patrolling the perimeter of the Drowning Square after yesterday’s attack,” Quint said.
Toran had talked to every guard he could find about Invy, but none recognized the name or remembered the girl who’d tried to warn them.
The only mention of an “Invy Grastol” he could find was in the prison records—the rice-stealing eyeball-piercer from the Ditch.
He was beginning to suspect she’d given him a false name.
“Why are you searching for this girl? You think she’s the Witch?”
He thought back to the panic he’d seen on her face right before the platform exploded. “She’s something.”
“But not the Witch?”
She’d saved his life. No Witch would do that.
“You didn’t see her at the Drowning Square. She knew it was going to explode before it happened. Perhaps she’s like Pinyak—addicted to magic—and instead of roses sprouting from her fingers, it gives her some sort of precognitive abilities.”
He thought back to those brief moments before the platform exploded.
How she had clutched her throat as if it was already burning.
How she had held her nose like she could smell the smoke before the flames erupted.
And how her gaze had held him so desperately, a clear warning to anyone who dared meet it.
There was an answer in the memory, something he needed.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I have this feeling—if I want to find the Witch, I need to find her first.”
Quint settled himself against the edge of Loriana’s old bed, running a large hand over the quilt’s fine stitching. “Okay, so let’s find her. What else do you know about this girl?”
“She’s from the Ditch. Her boots had a ring of dirt rising up around the soles.”
“That’s not much to go on,” Quint said. “Have you talked to the shop owners around the Drowning Square? They wouldn’t have left the area after yesterday’s drowning—maybe they remember her?”
Toran perked up. “Good idea.”
“If I were you, I’d head over there soon. I heard Captain Fell has another drowning planned for tomorrow, so the shop owners might get their facts mixed up if you wait.”
Toran shut the book of prison records. “Another drowning? How? The platform was blown to bits.”
Quint stood. “They started rebuilding it the second they removed the guards’ bodies. It should be ready by tomorrow morning.”
“For magic’s end,” he cursed. “I’ll go to the Drowning Square. Can you stall Fell?”