Chapter Nine Savant #2
A flash of gold-capped teeth. “That too. Can you blame me?” The floorboards creaked beneath his cane as he limped toward a worktable. “Your payment has been accepted with my compliments.”
They never would have been permitted entrance otherwise. The Savant’s loyalty was always to the highest bidder. The piece she’d traded was well-known and appropriately coveted—one of the Crimson Dagger’s more famous jobs. Reya could only hope it was worth the information they sought.
“I have many pieces from ages past in my collection,” he said to Caelan.
“From a time when magic-born ruled the continent. The staff of a Drelid Queen. Crystals from the caves beneath Old Etellina—though sadly no Etellinian steel.” An acknowledging nod at Reya.
“Obsidian from the Ashlands. A coin with the face of Regoman the Conqueror. Things a connoisseur of history like yourself would surely appreciate.”
Reya cut in. “We’re here for information.”
The Savant merely smiled. “My favorite.”
Reya ran her fingertips along the nearest shelf, pretending to admire a display of coins stamped with the profiles of old kings and emperors. “What do you know about Krakens?”
His eyes shone feral with glee, and not a hint of surprise. “Not one to mince words, is she?” he asked Caelan, who wisely didn’t answer.
A ladder squeaked on its wheels as the Savant rolled it across the room. He hooked his cane on one of the lower rungs and climbed, talking to himself, fingertips streaking the layers of dust on the books. He blew on the red leather spine of one, revealing an Old Rhiterran title embossed in gold.
“Before any of us were born, at the bottom of a forgotten chest in a lighthouse no one knows where, a logbook was recovered. Entries describe how pieces of a shipwreck had been washing up on the beaches. When the lighthouse keeper pulled a survivor out of the water, they wrote that the sailor had lost his mind, spouting tales about a sea monster. They never learned the name of his ship, and there was no year on the log, but the age of the parchment dates it to the latter half of the Second Age. Though we can only speculate, this was the first time the Kraken was ever alluded to in writing.”
Brandishing his cane, he crossed to the worktable and laid the book open. “The second was nearly three hundred years ago. A Kalterran captain delivering justice to a traitor described in a letter to his brother seeing the shadow of tentacles as long as the ship in the water.”
The time and research it must have taken him to track all of this information down… Reya’s eyes flicked to Caelan, who stood motionless across the room, eyes still fixed on the Ciron skull mounted above them.
“There have been other accounts,” the Savant went on. “Each one more easily contested than the last.” He donned a pair of white gloves and flipped the delicate pages. “Then came the story.”
The book was stunning. Slightly bowed with age, its vellum pages yellow and crinkled, the hand-bound manuscript was over four inches thick and longer than her forearm. Reya inhaled, taking the scent deep into her lungs until it was almost overwhelming. She loved the scent of old books.
“What you see here is a first edition of Reid and Bartholomew’s Tales of the World.”
Her eyes danced across the liquid gold quillwork, the initial lettering, and the faded illustrations. Her mother had read her the legend in question many times, along with all the others from a far smaller and more battered copy of the book he now flipped through.
“The story tells of a man whose wife was so beautiful, she attracted the attentions of a Fae prince.
The prince offered to take her back to his palace and give her anything she desired.
But the woman loved her husband. Furious over her rejection, the prince cursed her.
When her husband realized no human remedy could cure her, he journeyed south to Alethia to consult the great Sage healers.
But even the most powerful of them could not cure her.
“Then he went to the Riverlands to implore the Fae Queen, but she refused him an audience. At last, the Fae Queen’s daughter took pity on him.
Moved by the man’s love for his wife, she told him of the great sea beast, an ancient enemy of the Fae, whose blood could cure any ailment—even a Faerie curse.
The man hired a captain to sail him into the Kasmore Deep, where he lured it in, killed it, and bottled its blood to give to his wife. ”
The Savant’s voice turned ominous as he read directly from the book.
“‘Down, down into the blackest Deep, where wind dies beyond light’s reach, where Sirens wait for bones to keep, down, down into the graveyard of the sea, to slay the ocean’s mighty king.
’” His voice turned wry. “Unfortunately, the writers were rather vague about the actual slaying.”
“Perhaps because it’s just a Faerie tale,” Reya said.
The Savant removed his spectacles to clean them on the corner of his jacket. “It’s ironic, is it not, that we name the stories we cannot fathom to be real after the one creature that cannot lie.”
Weathered lips twisting at the corners, he repositioned the spectacles on the bridge of his nose.
“Who better to know the truth than the authors? Alas, Reid and Bartholomew are both pseudonyms, which was common for the period. But no matter. As is so often the case, the truth is right in front of us. The legend is set in a village along a coast from which several landmarks can be seen. Context leads us to believe this is the eastern coast of Ianess. Only three villages fit the description, each of which has its own legends about the Kraken.”
He paused for dramatic effect. Rolling her eyes, Reya indulged him. “Let me guess, you found them.”
The Savant’s smile was serpentine. “In Clare View Point, there is a grave belonging to one Eddar Bartholomew Foster and his wife, Evelyn Margot Foster, formerly Evelyn Margot Reid, who died at the age of eighty-nine.”
Reya shook her head in disbelief.
“Naturally, both graves have been searched. The blood isn’t there. Given the lavish estate on the grounds by the grave, my educated guess is that he sold what remained of the blood and lived as a wealthy man for the rest of his days.”
Reya didn’t miss a beat. “And you know who he sold it to.”
The Savant closed the book. “A private collector in Idrias claimed to possess a vial of Kraken blood around approximately the same time.”
Reya gave Caelan a subtle shake of her head. No way could they make it to Idrias and back in time. The continent was months away by sea to the south.
“But,” the Savant said, raising a finger, “it has been bought and sold many times since, on each occasion lesser in volume, and even the black market leaves traces. I have it on good authority that the blood is now in the hands of Domwell St. Lucius.”
She knew the name. So had her father. For decades, Domwell St. Lucius had been trying and failing to replicate the formula for Etellinian steel. A Rhiterran arms dealer, he was the second-richest man in the empire.
“What does Domwell St. Lucius want with Kraken blood?” In her experience, men with all the money in the world tended to use it to attain one thing: more power. Which could mean nothing good for anyone.
“What indeed,” the Savant hummed. “It’s not what he has to gain, but what his king does. Think, Crimson Dagger. What could yet stand between the House of Daranathius and ultimate power?”
She didn’t need to think about the answer. “The magic-born.” Reya detected an unmistakable spike in the temperature of the room.
The Savant’s eyes gleamed. “If the story proves true, if Kraken blood can indeed combat Fae magic, and if Domwell St. Lucius can find a way to forge weapons from it…”
“Rhiterra could take the Riverlands,” she answered.
The Savant clapped once as if to congratulate her on putting it together.
“It always comes back to land and power, doesn’t it?
Even in Faerie tales.” Reya joined him beneath the globe and followed the point of his cane along the northern Rhiterran coastline.
“St. Lucius was seen sailing east out of Edris with a small army of mercenaries yesterday morning after meeting with his imperial majesty. As I understand it, the blood travels with him.”
Lovely, she thought, sighing. It was hardly the first time she’d gone up against mercenaries. If there were enough of them, and they were well trained, the sellswords might be a problem.
“He works with several suppliers in Port Talluah whom he’s due to meet with. I cannot say for certain what his travel plans are beyond that. However, I can tell you that he owns a summer estate on South Easterly Island, for which he recently commissioned a number of servants. Money never lies.”
Good thing she was already packed.
She cocked a brow, and the Savant smiled, already anticipating her question. “The ship you’re looking for is named the Balfour.”
Reya looked to Caelan and nodded.
She headed for the door, but before she could open her mouth to thank the collector, he spoke again, almost to himself, “Ever since the Fall of the Sages, Rhiterran kings have had their eyes fixed on the west. The mystery of Fae magic is all that has kept them at bay. But with the right weapon, King Rothmire might do what Regoman the Conqueror never could.”
He could wipe out the last surviving kingdom of magic-born in Ianess.
The Savant looked at her then, and those magnified eyes saw far too much. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Reya swallowed, wondering where the Savant’s true loyalties lay, if anywhere. This job was becoming more complicated by the minute.