Chapter 19 Sage #2
“Because I think I’ve figured out who wants it badly enough to send us to the Northlands in near winter. Hazelbend—that’s where Remy says the Client’s man is headed to make the delivery. I heard that right, didn’t I?”
“Yes…”
Araphi curls her fingers around the tooth again, though it’s too large to disguise completely.
“Thought so. I’ve been there before. It’s a hamlet in Lintonbury built around an estate, not far from the queens’ summer palace.
That’s Clauneck property. At least, it is now.
It’s my Aunt Menorath’s inheritance, the Hazelbend ancestral home.
They treat it as their summer estate. That’s where my wedding will…
where the wedding is meant to take place in spring.
And where Menorath was headed with my mother when I snuck off to Kingfisher.
Sage, she’s the client—and perhaps my uncle too.
Rather, I think they are. Though I have no idea how my aunt could keep something like this from our family’s patron. I wonder if he knows…”
As Araphi speaks, horror climbs slowly up Sage’s spine like the vines that cling to the temple’s facade.
Menorath Clauneck.
The matriarch who, along with her husband, scuttled Margot Greenwillow’s family and future for profit, then kept the prospect of total ruin hanging over her head for years.
They would’ve displaced an entire village just to extort Sage’s best friend in this world.
They kept Margot and Yael apart and in agony to preserve their own reputation and social standing.
And that’s to say nothing of the many, many people across the kingdom who the Claunecks have trampled on their climb to the top.
The families they’ve impoverished, the land they’ve amassed, the policies they’ve supported, in order to gain more wealth than anyone could spend in several lifetimes. That’s who Sage has been working for?
“But…why would your aunt go to all this trouble?”
“I don’t know. For Clauneck?” Araphi guesses. “Perhaps to curry his favor?”
“But she despises Clauneck. Margot told me—she wants as little to do with your patron as possible.”
The bard rears back. “What do you mean, Margot told you? I’ve never heard Menorath say such a thing.”
Sage grinds her bottom lip between her teeth, trying to remember that frantic conversation through the compact many months ago.
Margot had been in her greenhouses, and Sage on the coast of the Serpentine Sea, with a landing party of pirates from the Upper Islands at her party’s back.
But she does her best to dredge up the details.
“When Margot’s family was supposedly indebted to yours, Yael’s parents were blackmailing her for years in exchange for a potion that would grant people the powers of a natural caster.
One dose, and you’ve got magic in your bones for life.
She thought they wanted it for profit. But Menorath wanted a way out from under Clauneck’s heel—a power source of her own. ”
“If she never got it from Margot,” Araphi considers, “maybe she thinks she’s found another way? That would explain the secrecy.”
“And why she’d contract unknown adventurers when your family’s got the funds to send dozens of parties out to scour the Northlands.
” The greatest of Harrow’s adventurers are so well known and well regarded, they can’t pass through a city nor a hamlet without drawing crowds.
Sage’s stomach sinks with the realization: She wasn’t some scrappy up-and-comer hired for her untapped potential.
She was a convenient nobody, desperate enough to take any job offered if it meant she got to keep moving.
“So what do we do?” Araphi asks, a plea in her voice.
“May I?” Sage holds out her own palm, and Araphi settles the tooth in it. Somehow, even in this cold, it’s warm enough to feel through her mitten.
“Whatever my aunt wants with a power source of her own, it can’t be for the good.”
“No, it can’t,” Sage mutters her agreement.
Yet even as her skin crawls, a hateful flame of ambition kindles momentarily within her.
This could still be her chance to prove her worth and make a name for herself as a ranger, a leader, of merit, regardless of her lack of connection or pedigree.
Once legend begins to gather around an adventurer, there’s no more need to scrape for jobs, or spend entire seasons waiting for opportunity to appear.
With a powerful client this well satisfied—even if the quest was never spoken of in public circles—Sage would be much in demand.
Remy could see to that. If she was one of Harrow’s great adventurers, she would never have to sit still again.
Someday, every corner of the kingdom might welcome her as though her arrival was a kind of homecoming.
“Sage?” Araphi’s eyes are dark and luminous pools, reflecting Sage back to herself.
With that, the flame blows out. Or rather, Sage snuffs it out. Because an artifact this rare and powerful in the hands of someone who’s only ever used the power she has to harm?
Unfathomable.
“We can’t let Remy take this to Menorath,” Sage decides as she says it. “We can’t let your aunt have it.”
“Perhaps if I explain…” Araphi slides off the log, reaching out for Sage and the tooth.
But Sage is already moving, hopping down from the log to stride with purpose toward the Swallow so that the toes of her boots nearly kiss the ice-crusted bank.
“There’s no explanation that will stop the Agent from doing his job.
” She stares down into what looks for all the world like a knee-deep stream trickling through the woods, instead of the deadly maw it truly is.
“We won’t change his mind.” Worse yet, she fears Remy stands a chance at changing hers.
So much for her carefully negotiated contract. With a deep breath, she holds the tooth out over the watery abyss.
“Don’t!” comes a half-desperate cry behind her, and then a sharp intake of breath.
Drawing the tooth back to her chest, Sage spins on her heel to take in the scene she can’t immediately make sense of: Araphi standing in front of the log, her face moon-pale and up-tilted. And Bramble behind her, holding a knife to her graceful throat with one trembling hand.