Chapter 51 Flarence
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Flarence
Saffron found herself oddly sad to say goodbye to Almere, because she felt her father’s presence so strongly.
Bellandry was his homeland, and he lived on in every lilting snatch of conversation she overheard, in every glass of warmed honeywine, in every crop of golden-brown hair she passed on the street.
He was here—and so was Levan.
For the first time since her betrayal in the Havenwood, she felt a subtle opening in him.
A book that had been padlocked shut sighing free of its bounds, allowing her not to read its chapters, exactly, but at least to brush her thumb over the edges of its pages.
The camping had helped, as had their conversation about his childhood.
Hearing about it had made her want to reach back through the bounds of time and space and destroy the people who had done it to him—though, of course, they were already destroyed.
She couldn’t say, with any amount of truth, that those deaths haunted her.
I woke up every day wishing for the pain to come.
If she had another chance, she would make both Vogolan and Lyrian suffer far more than they had.
Two days after arriving in Almere, their odd traveling band packed their things, departed Meraude’s Inn—Saints, Saffron would miss that bath—and arrived at the portari gate, now clear of shrieking Augurests, though Saffron still saw the afterimage of those bound figures, wrists stretched wide and bound to the ascenite axelmares, shaven heads and tattooed eyelids, chanted litanies echoing through the streets.
A larger picture of the continent was emerging.
The skirmishes Nissa reported on the Eqoran border, the unpoliced protests against Queen Vune’s rule in Bellandry, the collusion between the Bloodmoons and the Nyr?thi Steel King.
The world had been at peace for decades, and yet that peace felt fractured, uncertain.
As a modern history scholar, Saffron had learned to recognize the patterns that preceded major conflict.
Was this how it felt to live in the prelude to the Six Wars?
The War of Eight Mountains? Feeling tensions simmer and crackle, with the acute sense that one more unfortunate incident could trigger devastating hostilities?
What if she was that unfortunate incident?
What if the Fifth Prophecy was?
With an unconvincing smile in Levan’s direction, she stepped beneath the axelmare arches of the gate, dispelling the thoughts as best she could.
Saffron blinked, shivered, and looked around.
Flarence was notched on the border between the Bellandry and Nyr?th.
It was a village of in-betweens; a crooked, uneven seam separating two cultures, two peoples.
Just above it was a narrow stretch of land known as the Rapier, a sword of frozen earth separating the Stone Sea from the Cinereal.
The Rapier belonged squarely to Nyr?th and made the tundral nation almost impossible to invade by land—although historically, many battles had been fought over which nation owned the Rapier itself.
Flarence nestled at the foot of the razor shard like a worn-down rubber sole, its people carrying an innate weariness, an ancient fear of invasion.
The village had clear Augurest influence—statues to the prophets, a gleaming purple temple, smatterings of shaven heads.
Situated far enough north to be fully blanketed in snow and ice, many houses were painted in the pretty pastels native to Nyr?th—butter yellow and blossom pink, dusty indigo, the precise blue of a winter sky.
A small, cobbled square contained both a pillory and a whipping post, since corporal punishment was still in vogue in the tundral north.
Saffron spotted at least two military-looking mages who were scarified from the neck down.
Harrow stifled a yawn, clearly uninterested in the curious little place.
“What now?” he asked, with the tone of a man who hoped the answer would be sleep or drink.
Levan reached into the pocket of his violet Healer’s cloak—it was still so surreal, so warming, to see him in it—and pulled out a finely inked parchment scroll.
“The object we’re looking for is rumored to be hidden in a tidal cave off the Cinereal Sea.
” He tapped the top of the scroll. “I’ve studied the map, and—”
“You? Studying a map?” Saffron quipped, faux-astonished. “Will the wonders never cease?”
“—and the likeliest location is a small inlet a few miles east of here.” Levan politely ignored her sarcasm. “It’s the only place with cliffs around the water. Everywhere else, the ground is too close to sea level for tidal caves to have formed.”
Saffron nodded. “I wrote ahead and requested rooms at a local inn.” She turned to Harrow, Miret, and Relar.
“They’ve reserved two chambers for us—I hadn’t realized that the three of you would be joining us—but I’m sure Levan wouldn’t mind sleeping in the Forest of Lost Souls, since he loves camping so much. What does a bit of frostgnaw matter?”
“Fine with me,” Levan replied, deadpan. “The local blackfoxes might have more insightful conversation.”
Saffron raised a brow. “Ah yes, you are famed for your loquaciousness.”
A muscle in Levan’s jaw quirked, while Miret looked between the two of them with that kindly twinkle in his eye, as though sensing a rift newly repaired.
“We should deposit our things at the inn and then set off for the inlet.” Saffron peered at her watch. “It’s still early, and if it’s only a couple of miles on foot, it shouldn’t take too long to—”
“I said a few miles,” said Levan. “Not a couple.”
“Always with the pedantry. How many is a few, oh great navigator?”
“Maybe two hours on foot. Three at most.”
Harrow looked incredulously at him. “My blisters have only just started to heal.”
“You should have worn better footwear.”
Harrow pressed an outraged palm to his chest. “I’m a Highcloak. All my better footwear is for balls.”
“I could heal them for you, if you weren’t such a prideful martyr.”
“Hypocrisy, thy name is—”
“Why don’t you piss off to the inn, then? Take Relar. Don’t let him have any bivkar.” Levan said this last part with a fatherly sort of tone.
“No, it’s fine.” Harrow sighed elaborately. “I do want to bear witness to the Fifth—”
“Harrow,” Levan interrupted, with a subtle widening of the eyes that insinuated Harrow should shut his royal mouth. “Take Relar.”
The apothecary’s grandson, whose beard was growing in patchy tufts, and who seemed to have implausibly grown another inch overnight, rubbed the back of his head with a leather-gloved hand.
“I should search for some spinebark while we’re here.
Even if I fail, I can bring the Whitewings something of similar potency.
Cover my tracks for this excursion, avoid suspicion. ”
“That sounds like it would also involve walking,” Harrow complained, with no real amount of shame or self-awareness.
Relar shrugged. “I can go alone.”
“I’ll accompany the boy, if you like?” said Miret, removing his gold half-moon spectacles and rubbing away the smudges on the sleeve of his scholar’s cloak. “I have quite the eye for botanicals.”
“No, we need you at the caves,” Levan said.
Relar looked from the kingpin to his librarian. “I’m not going to run. Why would I leave my grandmother in jeopardy? If I disappear, so does your protection.”
Levan sighed. “Fine. Harrow, to the tavern. Relar, to the woods, but take Rasso. Savage beasts wander the Forest of Lost Souls, including several known fallowwolves. You should be left alone if you’re accompanied by Rasso. Saffron, Miret, and I will scope out the caves.”
It struck Saffron that Levan was far more trusting than he used to be.
Harrow had always insisted he was loyal to no one, and yet the kingpin was more than happy to leave the King’s Prophet with enough alone time that he could be feeding their movements back to the Crown.
And Relar had known affiliations with the Whitewings, had beheaded Levan’s right-hand mage.
The boy should be dead, but he wasn’t. He was here, out of some vague nurturing instinct of Levan’s.
There was a sort of nihilism to Levan’s decisions, as though the promise of unmaking twenty years and starting his life over rendered what happened in the present obsolete.
But Saffron knew they had to be more careful than normal—they had to evade capture, ruin, so that the conditions in which they could rewind the years would still be possible.
Everyone seemed uneasy as they went their separate ways.
“Saints.” Saffron stood atop a craggy cliff by the Cinereal Sea, a sharp wind snapping through her hair and cloak. “Where do we begin?”
The inlet was far larger than it looked on a map, with hundreds of tidal caves surrounding it.
The water was low, though the tide was waxing quickly, and the sheer quantity of the caves left Saffron with a sinking feeling.
Because of the tides, they’d only have time to cover a few every day before they disappeared back underwater.
Levan raised a brow. “Why do you think we brought Miret?”
“Hmm?” Miret peered out across the sea, as though searching the horizon for the secrets of the known universe.
Levan turned to Saffron. “Your father’s letter said the entrance to the cave containing the prophecy was warded.
We don’t need to search inside each one, because the very fact of being able to go inside must mean it’s not the right cave.
In theory we could rent a boat and sail around the inlet, attempting to shove a hand over the threshold of each one—wherever we meet resistance, we know we’re in the right place.
“However, these seas are treacherous, unpredictable. Prone to sudden storms, riddled with scarsharks. We’d have to get so close to the caves that the boat could be thrashed against the cliffs at any moment, and many have stone shards jutting through the water in front of them.
A natural defense, tricky to navigate in a vessel, and surely the type of hard-to-reach spot Sarcane would have chosen. ”
Miret rocked on his heels, rolling the balls of his feet back and forth. He wore some kind of leather slipper, despite snow on the ground. “I’m still waiting to hear how I might be useful.”
“Oh hush, you old crone.” Levan smiled, rare dimples divoting his cheeks. “You’ve always been able to pick up magical frequencies better than anyone I know. So we walk around the edge of the cliffs on foot, and you feel for a powerful ward below.”
It took several hours, pausing every two dozen yards as Miret closed his eyes and placed a palm over his heart to search for the resonant hum. Eventually they struck gold halfway around the inlet.
After standing still as an old oak for several minutes, Miret peeled his wrinkled eyes open and murmured, “It’s one of these three below—I can’t pick out exactly which.”
Inching as close to the edge of the cliff as she dared in high winds, Saffron peered down to the thrashing gray water below. “If I had to hazard a tactical guess, it would be the one with the natural rock barrier surrounding it.”
Levan nodded. “We’ll have to abseil down, when the time comes.”
“When the time comes?” Saffron turned to him, aghast. “We aren’t going now?”
A terse head shake, his golden hand gesturing to the darkening sky, the storm-bruised clouds. “Not with the sun setting, the tide coming in, and a ward still in place.”
“You’re the most powerful mage I’ve ever known,” Saffron argued, a rare impatience rearing inside her.
Usually she was adept at biding her time, waiting for the right moment to strike, but knowing the Fifth Prophecy may be hidden beneath her very feet was taunting.
“Can’t you strip out the ward by force?”
Saffron was surprised by the slightly wounded look on Levan’s face, as though she had crossed a line by acknowledging how powerful he was. Was it crass, when she knew what terrible things had been inflicted upon him in the name of said power?
“Only as a last resort,” he replied evenly. “We don’t know what other kinds of heinous magic we’re going to face in that cave, and I can’t be weakened so severely.”
Miret nodded his assent. “We also don’t know how strong the ward is—and that’s crucial before attempting to strip it. It might be held by a single wardkeeper, and Levan would certainly be able to overpower that, but it could also have been cast by far more mages. The effort could kill him.”
Saffron swallowed hard. There were many cases during her time on the streetwatch in which thieves had underestimated the strength of a ward, and had drained the lifeblood from their bodies in their attempt to breach it. “So we find the wardkeeper—or wardkeepers—and convince them to drop the ward.”
“And if they refuse?” Miret asked mildly.
Saffron shot Levan a dark, wordless look, and judging by the grim expression on his face, he feared for how far she might have to go.