Chapter Nine Savant
CHAPTER NINE
SAVANT
At any point, do you plan to tell me where we’re going?”
Reya prowled through the mist with a single-minded intensity. She tucked her braid into her hood and smoothed back the flyaways. The faster she moved, the less room she had to worry about the pressure building beneath her skin.
As a child, hiding her blood status had been paramount.
For years, her parents had kept her away from their village, telling people she was chronically ill.
In the smoke and ash and heat of her father’s forge, she’d never felt like she was being hidden away.
There, she’d had a purpose, a usefulness.
But the harder she tried to stop being what she was, the more she became the sickly child they claimed she was, and the harder the magic was to control.
Reya lifted her mask over her nose, making sure it was secure and her hood was in place. With every step, she shed the memory of the girl she had been, and donned the mask of the killer she had become.
“Three things, Caelan Halcyon,” she said as they passed a purple door studded with a latticework of iron grapevines, a sign they were in the right place. “One. You hired me to do a job. Do not confuse the promise of payment for blind obedience.”
She stopped before a narrow, cathedral arch door. It was the only unmarked home on the street, or so it appeared. If she didn’t know to look for the small insignia above the handle, she would have missed it: a quill set before an eight-pointed star.
“Two. Once we pass this threshold, you will become mute. Or you will wait outside.”
His glare told her he did not enjoy being told what to do. Reya held out her hand, wiggling her fingers when he didn’t move. Slowly, Caelan reached into his cloak and retrieved a familiar velvet pouch, never once breaking her stare.
This would cost them more than coin. The person they needed to speak to dealt in… rarity.
Reya snatched the bag and began digging through it, conducting a mental tally of coins, jewels, and papers.
Her stomach sank. If this was ten percent, then he’d definitely found all four of her caches.
Though, it seemed he hadn’t gotten into the Royal Bank of Rhiterra.
At least her vault was safe. She wasn’t completely broke if this all went sideways.
Thank you, Lennox Raulin, for teaching me this lesson.
“Remind me why this is necessary,” Caelan muttered when she held up an enormous canary-yellow diamond ring to the moonslight and sighed. It was one of her favorite pieces. She would be sad to part with it.
“Did you think this was going to be free? All jobs cost money, fire fingers. We need information. Information requires payment.” Reya cinched the pouch tight, secured it to her belt, and punched the seal in the door with her thumb.
Metal and wood began clicking, and a compartment snapped open in the door’s center.
Reya set the ring inside, pushed it closed, and stepped back.
She listened as whatever rigging was behind the door began to click and tap, taking her payment. Then silence.
Caelan grumbled, “Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
The mist curled around them like the Heap itself was trying to pull them in.
“What’s the third thing?” Caelan asked.
Reya took out her ruby dagger and began flipping it in the air.
“You wanted to know if the legends about me are true.” Each time, she caught it by the hilt, watching the rubies flicker in the moonslight.
“Most are convinced I’m actually a man. Some think the sword gives me some kind of power.
I once even heard a rumor that I persuaded a Faerie to spell my dagger to always strike true.
” She caught the dagger by the blade this time, right between her fingers.
“The truth is it doesn’t matter, so long as people are wondering.
The power is in the legend. In anonymity.
” She nodded toward the door. “The Savant is an antiquary. The best in the empire. He examines and verifies artifacts for black market dealers. If someone somewhere has managed to bottle Kraken blood, he’ll know where it is.
But understand that he is, above all things, a collector. Of information. Things. People.
“You must make yourself as uninteresting as possible. Do you understand?” She waited for her words to sink in.
The Savant was one of the few people she couldn’t read.
Every word out of his mouth was a cloud of mist she couldn’t see or feel her way through—a deviance she could never explain.
“Give him nothing he might use against you. And for the love of the All-Gods, don’t use your magic. ”
Those remarkable eyes narrowed. “Do I look like a fool to you?”
Reya shot him a glare. “I’ve been sweating since I met you.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, knowing how they sounded.
He stood utterly still, eyes never leaving hers, but sure enough, the temperature began to drop. “Better?”
A shiver ran down her spine.
Before she could answer, the door opened of its own accord, revealing a torchlit entryway. Reya went first down the shadowed hall, Caelan tight on her heels. When they reached the red curtain at the end, Reya lifted one corner and stepped inside.
Every wall was a veritable museum: Built-in mahogany shelves stacked high with gilded-edged tomes bound in rich leather, rolls of colorful silks, sprawling canvases.
Taxidermied creatures frozen mid-roar and leap.
Cabinets crowded with tonics, oils, herbs, healing salts, and spirits.
A nearly fossilized bracelet of bleached coral, aquamarine, and freshwater pearls.
A famed marble bust of Una in her crown of stars, the All-Goddess exalted by the Ianessians who had adopted their conqueror’s views of a single maker.
Reya had once helped Lennox fence a convincing replica of the sculpture, and she had a sneaking suspicion this was the original.
Candles flickered throughout the space, illuminating bolted glass cases filled with rare treasures.
In one, a swath of opalescent fabric was pinned across an emerald cushion, as though it had been cut from the overlay of a gown.
The delicate thread pattern was made to look like stained glass panes, the texture and color shifting in the firelight.
Every time she paid the Savant a visit, she found more to ogle. It was a thief’s paradise.
On one wall, draped in blue velvet, was a canvas taller than even Caelan, showing in exquisite detail the moment Una cast her lover, Iro, the All-God of freedom, into the Void.
Where Iro’s stomach was, the artist had played with the shading to create an impressively realistic glow meant to represent the All-Gods Iro had consumed in attempt to take the power of creation. Una’s children.
Reya shivered, glancing up at the massive glass orb that hung from the arched ceiling.
Every known landmass, waterbody, city, and forest in the world glowed in the torches and moonslight that shone through the stained glass skylights.
Golden rings rotated the sphere like a mobile, casting the room in moving halos.
The room was suddenly painfully quiet. Caelan’s footfalls had stopped, and he had gone the kind of still only Sages could manage. When she saw what had drawn his attention, she nearly tripped over a vase.
Mounted on the far wall was a skull the size of a small ship.
The ivory remains were from a creature she’d never seen before.
No doubt an extinct one, given its size.
Something like a cross between a lion and a snake, it had layers of teeth the length of her sword and horns that curved back and around its head.
“Magnificent, is it not?”
Reya followed the imperious rasp to the wiry figure who stepped out from behind a weathered statue of Adara Daranathius, King Rothmire’s late granddaughter.
Despite the late hour, he was dressed for proper business, navy wool coat and trousers unwrinkled, shoulder-length gray hair heavily oiled and slicked back above either ear.
His round spectacles were far too large, making his eyes appear twice as big.
He gripped a gold-tipped wood cane—which she’d long suspected wasn’t a cane at all—with still-steady fingers despite being well into his sixties.
“Volucrum Serpentis,” the Savant said, gazing up at the skull. “The winged serpent. Or as it’s more commonly known—”
“Ciron.” The word was dead on Caelan’s tongue. No inflection. Reya wanted to hurl her dagger at his face. They’d been inside all of three minutes, and he’d already spoken without prompting.
“Indeed,” the Savant hummed, turning his attention to Caelan. “You know your history.”
This time, Caelan wisely kept his mouth shut. But the damage was done. The Savant’s oversized eyes were practically sparkling as they took in Caelan.
“I purchased him—at least, we think it’s a him—from an Idrian trader who dug him up in the Ashlands,” the Savant continued, growing more animated as he spoke.
“Cirons once dwelled in the Ashlands. According to the few surviving texts that tell tale of them, their scales could shift in color, allowing them to camouflage in the Sinfair Mountains against the clouds above and stone below. A perfect predator. I once acquired a translation that claimed they fought in the Great Requiem. On whose side we may never know.” He gave a wistful sigh.
“Imagine if the whole skeleton might have been recovered. What a sight that would be. A complete set.”
“One would think you’re trying to intimidate your clients,” Reya drawled, trying to pull his attention back to her.
Finally, the Savant faced Reya. She didn’t miss how his magnified eyes went right to the sword peeking over her shoulder. “Nothing intimidates you, does it, Crimson Dagger?” He gave her a wry smile. “It’s been some time since you came to see me. I’ve missed your company.”
“You’ve missed my coin, you mean.”