Chapter 5 From Sacred to Sacrosanct
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From Sacred to Sacrosanct
Saffron pulled the plain black cloak tighter around her body, strolling toward the crooked wandmakery at the end of the street. Rasso pattered at her heel, panting happily, like the very best of boys.
Thanks to the fallowwolf, she’d been free for four days now.
Four days, and the Bloodmoons had not followed—or perhaps they had tried, and her expert warping and wefting of a tangled trail made the hunt impossible.
Four days spent plotting her next moves, scheming in response to dead kingpins and dead captains, trying to quell the ludicrous tenderness of her heart, the feeling of grief whenever she thought of Levan Celadon.
There had been the temptation to embrace the escape, at first. To disappear into Hamren or V?lgard or Kintaso, a sprawling city in a new land where neither the scarlet nor the silver tendrils could reach.
A fresh start was faintly appealing, but she had sacrificed so much, endured so much.
She could hardly walk away now, not after she’d finally found a way to fix her world: by unmaking the last twenty years to save both her parents and Levan’s.
For this, she would need three things.
First, a weaverwick wand of her own. Not just to return to childhood and prevent her parents’ deaths, but for her safety in the meantime. If things went south with Levan again, if he moved to kill or compel her, she had to be able to undermine it.
Second, her father’s long-lost letter—the letter Captain Elodora Aspar had described in her final moments, mouth leaking blood, eyes filled with regret.
Some deep gut instinct told Saffron this letter was key to everything.
Since Timeweaving ran through ancestral lines, she wanted to know everything about her heritage, whether her ancestors had been allies or rivals of the Rezaran throne, whether there was a birthright weaverwick hidden in some forgotten vault.
Third, an unsaintly amount of ascenite to bolster her Timeweaving—enough to wind back such a perilous number of years.
More ascenite than she could ever hope to accrue on her own, which meant she had to stay aligned with the Bloodmoons, whose looted wealth rivaled King Quintan’s own reserves.
And for that, she had to win back Levan’s favor.
The opportunity had come to tell Levan the truth from the outset, when he’d offered leniency in exchange for honesty.
Yet everything had been so fraught, fractious, balanced on a blade edge between mercy and murder.
This monumental revelation would have given him one more reason to kill her, because as a legacy Timeweaver, she represented a possible threat to his mother’s claim.
Surely, he could not abide such a thing in his ranks.
She would tell him eventually, but only once everything had stabilized, only once he trusted her again.
And for that, she had a plan.
Saffron took in the unfamiliar locale. Carduban was in the throes of wind season, and a warm desert gale threaded through the twisty streets, grains of sand scrubbing her face raw.
The border city was a wealthy place, notched in the Mountains of Promise—home to the continent’s biggest ascenite mines.
Communal spaces were adorned with the precious, magic-bolstering material, grand fountains carved into sandserpents and sunhawks, cobbled walkways inset with star-shaped tiles, ornate windowsills where flowers and herbs flourished with unnatural speed and color.
The wandmakery’s maroon awnings snapped like the wings of a great wyrm. The sign hanging over the black-and-burgundy shop front read Mizad’s Emporium, and inside the window, the proprietor had dutifully slapped dozens of Crown decrees:
Following King Quintan Arollan’s 14th Amendment to the Public Safety Act of 1074PV, the sale of weaverwicks is prohibited by Vallish wandmakers. Those found in breach are punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Ordering Rasso to wait around the corner, Saff pushed inside the shop, a bell tinkling over the doorway.
Oak cabinetry lined all four walls, the shelves inset with ascenite and rubies, the wands displayed proudly on black velvet cushions—the shop specialized in currantpalm, a type of Eqoran wood favored by Wielders.
Between each wand cabinet stood bookshelves topped with antique tomes, their leather-bound spines cracked, gold foil lettering peeling away.
Siran Mizad stood behind a curved counter at the back of the shop, carving letters into a palm-size wooden plaque with a deeply furrowed brow.
The edges of his black moustache were waxed into swirls, and his bald brown head gleamed under an ascenite chandelier.
He wore a gold-framed monocle and a wandmaker’s cloak the color of red wine.
“Help you?” he asked shortly, northern Eqoran accent gritty with sand and wind.
“I’m looking for a weaverwick wand.”
Words she’d uttered countless times over the past four days, as she’d traipsed all over Vallin in search of one. A haughty merchant in Novarin, the scholar’s city, had recommended Mizad—an old business associate and “all-round scoundrel.”
Mizad laid down his engraving tool, raking his gaze over his customer like a jeweler measuring a gemstone’s worth. “Allow me to search my storeroom. Bear with.”
As he disappeared through a back door, Saffron studied the old, rare books on the shelves, pulling out particularly interesting titles and studying their descriptions.
Minutes rolled into a quarter hour, and Mizad still did not return.
Eventually, the bell above the front door tinkled and three shadow-draped figures stepped over the threshold.
The first was a very familiar Silvercloak.
Gaian Villar had pale skin and long, ashy hair the same hue as the silver cloak pinned at his throat.
His family was quietly wealthy—they owned a creamstone quarry in the Royal Riverlands—and implausibly well-adjusted.
Saffron had trained with him and four other cadets at the Silvercloak Academy, and until this very moment, she’d believed him to be undercover over the border in Pons Aelii.
At the sight of Saff, Gaian’s mouth fell open. “Killoran?”
He was flanked by two female soldiers, each wearing the gold-trimmed plum cloaks of the Vallish infantry, who exchanged perturbed glances.
“I’m sorry, Meza’am.” The wandmaker reentered the shopfront with his chin tucked to his chest, muttering remorsefully (and perhaps overly politely) to Saffron. “I evaded a prison sentence by promising to turn in any mage who came in search of a weaverwick.”
Gaian stepped farther into the room, the heels of his black polished boots clacking like gavels. “Killoran, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged wryly. “Trying to rewrite old mistakes.”
Gaian eyed her shabby black cloak. “Aren’t you just a Mage Practer?”
There was a whole lifetime of shame on the word just. An old frustration flared, but she kept it contained. “There’s no way to know whether you can Timeweave until you try, and no way to try without a weaverwick.”
“You’d really do that?” Gaian seemed aghast. “Turn back years and years just to unmake—what? What would you unmake, exactly?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? I’m just a Mage Practer. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you…on your other assignment?” She tried to be discreet—the two soldiers would not be privy to Gaian’s undercover intelligence work.
A muscle twitched on his squared-off jaw. “Cover was blown, situation grew hostile. Aspar reassigned me.”
Saffron kept her face neutral. Gaian likely knew by now that Captain Aspar died in the Havenwood, but word had not yet reached him that Saffron had been there too—in a scarlet cloak, no less.
“Sebran’s posted in Carduban too, no? Is border tension simmering so high we need two silvers on the watchtower? ”
Something dark passed over Gaian’s face. “Sebran was reported missing in action weeks ago.”
She gaped at him. “Sebran? A deserter? There’s no way. Something awful must have—”
“It’s being taken care of.” Gaian shook his head at the infantry mages. “Let’s go. She’s not a threat.”
“We aren’t going to arrest her?” asked one of the soldiers, cracking her knuckles as though hankering for a scuffle. “She breached the Crown decree.”
Saffron hooked a churlish brow. “Did I?”
Gaian pressed his lips into a flat line. “I don’t think there was any real intent behind her inquiry. She’s just desperate. Lost.”
“Charming.”
He sighed, softening slightly. “Saffron…I’m sorry things ended up here.
You were a great cadet, and you would’ve had a lot to offer the force.
But you’d be better served moving on with your life.
Let it all go. Your mistakes, your failings.
Learn to live alongside them, instead of trying to unmake them. ”
Sanctimonious vock.
The other soldier stepped furiously forward, a copper braid bouncing against her full chest. “Detective Villar, this is not proper procedure. You are allowing a preexisting relationship with the suspect—”
“Suspect?” Saffron laughed bitterly. “Oh, it’s strange to be on this side of it. Although I suppose I’m already an ex-convict.”
“An ex-con—sir.” The redheaded soldier glared at Gaian. “We must follow proper—”
“Fine, fine,” sighed Gaian. “Let’s question her here.”
“Interrogation by the esteemed Gaian Villar? I’m honored.”
Gaian was famed for his prowess in the questioning room, breaking even the most withholding of suspects with a combination of cool glares and trick-laden lines of inquiry.
Saffron quietly believed Gaian was a Compeller—before she’d undertaken the Bloodmoon assignment, Captain Aspar had let slip that such a mage walked among them. Gaian was the natural fit.
“Why did you seek the purchase of a prohibited wand?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, a deep ennui over my purposeless life.” Saffron waited to feel a probing tendril in her mind, a subtle insistence that she tell the truth, but if Gaian was compelling her, she did not feel it. Then again, she was immune to magic—all but Levan’s, for whatever torturous reason.
“Did you have any intention of practicing the maligned art of Timeweaving?”
“Like you say, I don’t have the right blood.”
“If you did have the right blood, would you have unmade time?”
“If your grandmother had straw hair, would she be a broomstick?”
The corner of Gaian’s mouth twitched. “Killoran. This is becoming hostile.”
Saffron sighed, somewhat dramatically. “Look, this is all hypothetical. I am not a Timeweaver, and this kind gentlemage”—she stabbed a thumb in the direction of Mizad—“does not have any weaverwicks to sell. If I went out onto the street and asked a random passerby whether they had any darkseed, and they said no, would a crime have been committed?”
Gaian pinched the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps you should go into philosophy. I can picture you smoking a pipe in a fireside armchair.” He glanced behind him, took several steps toward her, then dropped his voice several decibels and an octave.
His breath smelled of old coffee. “Do you know anything about Sebran’s disappearance, Killoran? ”
Saffron blinked, confused. “Of course not. Why would I?”
“I heard…rumors. Regarding your post-Academy movements.” A meaningful pause. “The company you choose to keep.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, maintaining her polderdash face. The polderdash face so convincing it had won her the deadliest undercover assignment in the history of the Silvercloaks. “I haven’t heard Sebran’s name in months. I’d almost forgotten he existed, frankly.”
Another lie. She missed her former cohort so much that it burned like an ulcer in her belly.
Some of the tension dropped from Gaian’s shoulders. “I knew it couldn’t be true. A scarlet cloak? Not after what happened to your parents. Still, if you hear anything…”
“Does this mean I’m free to go?”
“Yes, Killoran. You’re free to go.”
Saffron strode past Gaian and out the door.
As she rounded the sandy corner toward the nearest portari gate, Rasso bounded after her, tail wagging, although judging by the slight downward tilt of his ears, the beast understood that Saffron had not secured a coveted weaverwick.
Still, Saffron allowed herself a small, victorious smile.
Inside her cloak pocket was no Timeweaving wand, true, but she’d snagged a decent consolation prize.
A navy leather-bound tome of wand lore titled Weaverwicks: From Sacred to Sacrosanct, pilfered from a high shelf while Mizad was in the back room summoning the Silvercloaks.
Perhaps, in the absence of her father’s letter, the book could offer some insight on the reviled magical art she had never been given the opportunity to master.
Perhaps she could even find her own ancestral history hidden in its pages.
But learning would have to wait, for she could not stay rogue forever.
As she and Rasso stepped beneath the arcane arches of the portari gate, she thought grimly of the next stop on her sojourn.
“Ad Atherin Central-West.”
The whorls of magic folded around her, dragging her back into the heart of Bloodmoon territory.