Chapter 45 Five Trips
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Five Trips
Before leaving for Bellandry, the kingpin made five trips.
A week had passed since he’d read that letter—and rejected Saffron’s advances.
Now every time they crossed paths in the corridors of the mansion, they gave each other stiff nods, or Levan would ask something inane about the laundering she was overseeing.
The responses were stiff, un-Saffron-like.
There was no talk of their upcoming trip north beyond when and where they’d meet, and certainly no talk of the love lost between them.
Which was fine by Levan, because he had business to attend to.
First, he went to cell six, only to find the prisoner still unconscious. Bruises faded, body weakened. A loose collection of muscle and skin and bones. Breathing, but barely. As he always did, he tried to heal the prisoner. As he always did, he failed.
This trip to see the prisoner made Levan crave loxlure more than he had in years, and he had to run sixteen miles to rid himself of the desire.
Even then it simmered below the surface, an itch, an impulse, a voice screaming at him without cease.
A hunger for oblivion. A thirst that could only be slaked by one thing and one thing alone.
An agony so great that only loxlure could numb it.
It troubled him that the need was growing louder with time, not quieter.
It took several days to heal the burn on his side.
He debated back and forth for hours at a time, half glad for the sharp sting, the way it ameliorated his wavering power, the punishment it served for his many ills.
The other half of him knew that an act of healing would go a small distance to repairing his severed command over magic itself, and it was to this argument that he eventually ceded.
He couldn’t go on this potentially doomed journey to Bellandry without his compelling to fall back on.
After soothing his own burn, he healed wherever he could: people, plants, objects. Slowly, he felt the connection to his magic strengthen. Often the only thought keeping him from succumbing to loxlure was that it might somehow tarnish this nascent bond.
So that was the first trip.
Second, he went to his mother’s crypt to check on Halant’s progress, which was nonexistent.
But the necromancer seemed pleased when Levan told him a scarlet mage had been sent to Nomaden to retrieve Teny Tolvas, without whom well replenishment was impossible.
Tolvas should be in Atherin by the end of the month, and Halant agreed to keep attempting resurrection before then.
By now, though, the prospect of a better way had laid down roots in Levan.
Why settle for a Risen mother and the legacy of a brutal criminal empire when Saffron could unmake it all?
He was called to the idea of a blank slate, a fresh blanket of snow ready for a new set of footprints.
The opportunity to make cleaner, kinder marks on the world.
This would save the prisoner in cell six, would save the hundreds of others who had fallen in the name of resurrecting a dead queenpin.
The greatest act of Healing he could imagine.
He’d often thought, since his mother’s death, that the real reason he wanted to bring her back was not to install her upon a stolen throne, but to return to the version of himself she had so adored.
Saffron’s plan offered that in the realest sense, and so he would do whatever it took to ensure her success.
Third, he went to Elderstones—the apothecary where Relar Zamorin worked with his aged grandmother. But Levan did not plan to punish Segal’s killer yet. There was a far smarter game to play.
Saffron had wondered whether the Whitewings were gathering ingredients to make a substance to rival loxlure.
If Levan killed Relar and his grandmother, the Whitewings would simply find another unfortunate apothecary to blackmail and threaten into cooperation.
Far better to keep the one Levan did have influence over alive—and working for the Bloodmoons.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to let the boy walk away unbranded, but it was a decision Levan would make again, even at the cost of Segal’s head. There had to be a way to keep mages loyal without mutilation.
Elderstones was a small, neat shop with teal awnings and a gold eagle emblem on the hanging sign.
A tiny bell tinkled over the doorway as Levan entered, the scents of dried herbs and old spices and stale blood hitting him like a physical thing.
Two mages looked up from the counter—one a hunched older woman with facial moles and an apothecary’s monocle, the other a lanky, pimple-faced teenager—both wearing pale blue cloaks and fearful expressions.
Relar stepped back, pinning himself against a row of tall mahogany shelves, and then fixed a determinedly normal expression on his face. His grandmother’s hand went to his elbow, gripping with gnarled, arthritic fingers.
“You killed my right-hand mage,” Levan said evenly, striding up to the counter and resting his golden palm on it. He kept his wand notched in his belt, letting the implied violence of his scarlet cloak do all the intimidation.
The grandmother pressed her palm against her mouth, as though to keep a scream from escaping. Relar’s head shook wildly, as it had right before Levan almost branded him. “No, I—”
“I have a reliable witness.”
The boy’s chin wobbled, and Levan splintered. He saw himself in Relar: quiet, studious, smart, deeply afraid, feeling the life he’d wanted for himself slipping away on the violent tide of another mage’s greed.
“P-please, I had no choice, I—the Whitewings forced me, and—”
“I’m not here to brand you. Not that such a thing would be possible, since you stole the relevant iron. Planning to use it against me?”
Relar lifted his chin. “No. Stopping you from using it on anyone else.”
“How admirable.”
“Why are you here, if not to punish me?” Relar asked warily, sensing a trap just beyond his ken.
“I want you to work with us. I want you to tell us everything the Whitewings ask you to source, and I want to know everything you see or hear around them. I also want you to accompany me on a trip to northernmost Bellandry tomorrow. I’m leaving the city for a while, and I need to keep tabs on the Whitewings in my absence. You represent one way of doing that.”
Relar’s hand quivered to the handle of his wand and then withdrew again, as though he couldn’t decide whether to attack or defend or run. “Why would I risk that? The Whitewings would kill me if they found out.”
“I will offer your family protection against the Whitewings.”
The grandmother’s breath hitched in her throat. “Protection?”
“I’ll station two mages near the apothecary, and provide you with an enchanted panic button, so that you can call upon them at a moment’s notice.
While Relar is with me, he’ll be untouchable.
And if they discover you’re working with the scarlets, I’ll ensure safe passage out of the city—the country, if needs be.
I don’t think the Whitewings have the will or the means to follow. ”
Rather than looking relieved at this offer, Relar stared despondently over Levan’s shoulder, as though expecting a Whitewing to burst in at any moment and catch him liaising with the scarlet kingpin. It was a valid concern, but hopefully the Whitewings weren’t watching the shop too closely.
“I don’t suppose I have another choice,” Relar said at last.
“Death, or the brand. I’m not a forgiving man, and you murdered one of my men.
I understand that you had little choice.
Trust me when I say I’ve had to make the same decision myself many times—it’s how we all end up in this life.
Once you’re dirty, you’re always dirty. Once there’s blood on your hands, it cannot be washed away. ”
Relar looked at his grandmother, who was crying silently. While her hips were still rounded and her breasts swelled low on her belly, her face had the gaunt, shriveled look of someone who had lost a lot of weight very quickly—from stress, from fear.
“When do we leave?” the boy asked, more resolutely than he likely felt.
“Tomorrow morning. You’ll tell the Whitewings you’re traveling north for an ingredient.”
“Alright. I’ve still been unable to procure any spinebark for them. I’ll tell them I’m following a new lead.”
A chill scraped down the back of Levan’s neck.
Spinebark?
Hells.
Spinebark was a rare form of pain relief so powerful—and addictive—that the continent had been stripped clean of it during the Battle of Independence between Bellandry and the Eastern Republics.
Though many attempts had been made to replant the spine trees that produced it, the saplings would never take to the soil in which they had once thrived.
An ongoing source of bafflement for botanists the world over, but also, as most people tended to agree, for the best. Spinebark addiction and subsequent withdrawal ravaged the Eastern Republics in their first decade of freedom from the Bellandrian throne, and they were almost reconquered because of a weakened army.
Levan tried not to let his disquiet show.
With a final nod farewell to the terrified apothecaries, and instructions to meet him at the Acolyte Avenue portari gate the next morning, the kingpin left the shop and made his way to another.
Artan’s Antiques was a dusty old establishment that Levan abhorred in most meaningful ways.
It was so disorderly, so chaotic, its artifacts levitating and diving at random intervals, its shelves laid out with no clear order or pattern so that you could never quite find what you were looking for.
Levan suspected Saffron would find it all rather charming, but he tried to make his own visits as perfunctory as possible.
“Afternoon,” he said, to the slender, fox-faced proprietor with hair the color of sun-burnished wheat.
Unperturbed by his scarlet cloak, Artan gave him a little mock salute as she failed to wrangle a set of cursed polderdash cards back into their wooden sleeve. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering whether you might have anything that…” He trailed off, which he was not usually prone to doing, but the unspoken words filled him with a sense of failure.
Anything that might mend a broken connection to magic.
It seemed a death wish to go on the quest to Bellandry with his magic still splintered, yet paranoia curdled in his belly at the thought of confessing to this random shopkeeper that the kingpin of Atherin’s deadliest criminal organization was weakened.
Artan raised a brow, but did not prompt him to continue.
As he reached for a small black mourncrow ornament on a shelf, however, she glanced at his golden hand and then hissed, like some sort of feral serpent. “I wouldn’t touch that, if I were you.”
Withdrawing his palm, he frowned. “Why not?”
“It’s supposed to make you dream of lost loved ones, like its living counterparts, but…every time I’ve touched it, it’s given me horribly realistic nightmares. My lost loved ones Risen from the dead and come to seek vengeance on me for letting them die in the first place.”
“Ah.” Perhaps not the best talisman at the present moment. “Why be honest with me? Surely your job is to sell whatever you can?”
“Oh, no,” Artan said cheerfully. “Those lost loved ones were dreadfully wealthy and left me everything. This is merely a hobby.”
“Perhaps I’ll just leave it, then. Thank you for your candor.”
As Levan turned to leave, however, his gaze caught on a jewelry cabinet—and a very familiar necklace hanging inside. Delicate gold chain, wooden oval pendant, two gemstones set on its surface. Purple sapphire and glittering emerald.
Saffron told him she’d lost it.
An immense dread expanded low in his stomach.
What would have been worth trading her most precious possession for? The last thing she had left of her parents—her parents themselves, their bodies, their souls. Surely there was nothing. Certainly not that painmaker she’d used in the Havenwood, or—
Oh.
A weaverwick was not the only thing required to turn back time. Levan knew for certain that his mother’s old hourglass had been left behind in his father’s office that night, and such things were incredibly rare, incredibly expensive to purchase from establishments just like these.
Saffron was so hellsbent on seeking the protection of tempavicissan that she’d trade anything for it. But Saints, how it must have hurt her.
He should feel angry, should be writhing with it.
She’d used that hourglass to betray him.
And yet all he could think of when he saw that pendant was the girl she must have been at six years old, watching her parents as they were brutally slain by mages in cloaks just like his.
He thought of the jeweling ceremony, how heavy those gemstones must have felt around her young throat.
He thought of how she had not spoken for half a decade thereafter, thought of how her hand went to that very pendant as an adult when she was feeling too much.
He lifted his golden palm to the glass cabinet, his breath fogging the front.
“How much for the necklace?”
The fifth and final visit Levan paid was to Harrow Claver, whom he had not seen or heard from in weeks. It was Asting evening, which meant he’d be sinking bottles of honeywine and heckling the poor bard at the Twelve Jackals, a centuries-old tavern tucked around the corner from the Palace.
The King’s Prophet was hiding something, and it was time to figure out what.